Chapters 3 to 5 - Communication with Spirits during the Post-Apostolic Period and in Modern Times

- 8 - He could not remain silent. For it was not he himself that was speaking, but something else spoke from within him and would not allow him to stop. Meanwhile he is not aware of anything that is going on around him. He is utterly unaffected by exhaustion, which would ordinarily have made it impossible for a man of his age to remain standing so long. Everyone present realized that it was not Polycarp himself who spoke, but that someone else was speaking through him. A sight like this is always unnerving to those who witness it, and this is generally true whenever the spirit world from the Beyond comes into contact with people in a manner perceptible to the human senses, but especially so for those who witness it for the first time. Weinel, p. 83: “Undoubtedly the Swabian clergyman Blumhardt, at who’s praying the sick felt the spirits of disease leave them, was someone who prayed like Polycarp.” The state of “deep trance”, or actual “ecstasy”, was very prevalent among the mediums of the Montanists. Eusebius, Montanus’ opponent, says that it was reported to him that: “The recently baptized Montanus, motivated by boundless ambition, allowed the evil enemy to enter his soul. He was filled with a spirit and, having suddenly been possessed and fallen into ecstasy, began to speak in a state of great emotion, uttering foreign-sounding words. Similarly, two women aroused by him spoke, “while unconscious, quite suddenly and strangely like Montanus, filled with the same evil spirit.” The spirit speaking through Montanus explains this mediumistic state in the following words: “Behold, man is like a lyre (a musical instrument), and I fly to him like a plectrum (with which that instrument is played).” This describes accurately the relationship in which a spirit stands to the medium through whom it speaks. The medium is merely the instrument in the hands of the spirit; he is the piano and the foreign spirit is the piano player. This is so of all true mediums, without exception. The condemnation expressed by Eusebius in the foregoing sentences of the spirit influences at work in the religious congregation of the Montanists, who were, after all, Christians like himself, is the judgment of a religious opponent. It must be remembered that of all enemies, the bitterest are religious ones. Religious opponents of all times have made the freest use of the weapons of lies and slander and distortion of the truth. That spirit communication among the Montanists could not have been of the nature imputed to them by their Catholic opponents is obvious from the fact that Tertullian, the most learned and serious church teacher of the time, went over from the Catholic congregation to the Montanists. Whoever is familiar with the works of this church teacher will understand at once that the spirit manifestations that occurred among the Montanists must have been of a serious and sacred nature; otherwise, this man would never have joined that congregation. Inasmuch as the spirit workings among the Montanists attracted great attention among the Christians and did serious harm to the recognized Christian church known as the Catholic, the leaders of the Catholic Church of that time promptly proclaimed the dogma that no true instrument of God speaks while in ecstasy, that is to say, in a deep trance. They did this in spite of the fact that it was generally known that there had been many people in all ages who had spoken as instruments of God while in a state of ecstasy. Thus Athenagoras, Catholic though he was, who lived during those times, says:

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