has nevertheless been contradicted by Protestants, particularly by Calvinistic teachers. This I must not conceal from you. They have pretended, and you will soon be struck with astonishment at it, that this discipline of secrecy and reserve upon the mysteries, far from coming down from the apostles, was unknown to the three first ages, and only dates its origin from the fourth. These gentlemen have found it suitable and convenient enough to suppose, that the pagans of the three first ages were perfectly acquainted with the doctrine of the Church on the Eucharist, in order to display with greater plausibility a pretended unanswerable objection against the Catholic dogma. But what they have invented against the truth has never been able and never will be able to stand examination. The principle they here suppose is evidently contrary to facts and even to good sense. In effect, how could these gentlemen, with their well known sagacity and talents, imagine, and how can they have the hardihood to attempt to persuade others that what was generally known during the three first ages, ceased all at once to be known in the fourth? that all the bishops and all the members of every christian society should then have formed the project, and have been able to accomplish it, to remove away in a day from every thing that was not christian the belief of the Eucharist, which the day before was unknown to no one? Did ever any one think of attempting to conceal from the world what for centuries had been known over all the earth? If it be a folly to attempt it, is it a less supportable folly to suppose that such a thing was ever undertaken, and above all, undertaken with success? The secrecy so religiously observed in the fourth age, demonstrates therefore from this single fact,

that it must have been equally observed in anterior times, and up to the days of the apostles. It is very true that the fourth age, abounding more in monuments of every kind, furnishes us with many more proofs of the discipline of secrecy, than the three first which were unceasingly agitated by persecutions. Prayer, and good works were then the great occupation, and they had less to leisure for writing, when every moment they were expecting to be called forth to answer for their faith and seal it with their blood.

But, Sir, if the three first ages offer us fewer direct proof than the succeeding one, they present indirect proofs, which perhaps have still more weight, and which, I doubt not, will excite in you still more interest and admiration for those heroic periods of christianity. In fact, tell me, I pray, if the apostles and their disciples had made no mystery of the Eucharist, if in the three first ages, jews and pagans, unbelievers and catechumens, had known the doctrine and practice of it, would people have ever dreamed of forging, with regard to the celebration of this sacrament, the atrocious calumnies, of which undoubtedly you have heard? Would they have succeeded in gaining credit for them in the world? in raising up all nations against the christian name? in making these nations demand the punishment and death of the christians, whom they abhored on account of the erroneous notions they had formed of them, as abominable monsters, unworthy to see the day? Ferocious men had invented these horrors: men probably deceived had circulated them. They ran therefore through the provinces of the empire, every where admonishing the world to guard against a new sect of people, who, under the mask of exterior virtues, gave themselves up, in

the secrecy of their mysteries, to the most shameful acts of cruelty and debauchery; who slaughtered, as they confidently asserted, a new born infant, covered with flour, preserved the blood to drink or to dip their bread therein, roasted their palpitating victim, then divided its limbs among them for a repast, and terminated this horrid feast by casting a bit before a dog, which being tied to the lamps, overturned and extinguished them by leaping upon its booty; that then men, women, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons were all confusedly and indiscriminately jumbled together in the dark. Do not these imputations framed and accredited upon uncertain and confused notions of the body and blood, of which they had heard that the christians participated, do they not, I say, shew, on the one hand the ignorance universally existing among the people, and on the other the impenetrable secrecy observed by the christians on what was believed and practised among them? And now, Sir, how far back do you think these calumnies and their bloody consequences may be traced? As far up as the very time of the apostles. We learn from Origen,' that from the birth of christianity, the jews had spread a report through the world that the christians fed upon the limbs of an immolated babe; from Tertullian, that from the reign of Tiberius, these feasts of Atreus and Thyestes had been again conjured up through hatred and detestation of the christians; and in fine from Eusebius, that Simon and his disciples, Carpocrates, Basilides and Saturninus, were the authors of these

'Lib. VI, contra Celsum.-Apol., cap. XVII.-'Hist., Lib. IV. c. VII.

atrocities. Simon, having received baptism from Philip the apostle, and participated in the mysteries, had returned to his art-magic and impostures, and by these calumnies, worthy of an apostate, he thought without doubt, that he should either force the christians to renounce their religious observance of secrecy, or make them sink under the weight of this infamous accusation.

If the apostles and their disciples had made no mystery of the Eucharist: if, in the three first ages, Jews and Pagans, unbelievers and catechumens had known its doctrine and practice, why did the philosophers, who wrote at that time, reproach them with the obscurity in which they kept themselves, and from it pretend to justify the accusations which the voice of the whole world raised against them. In like manner, at the entrance of the third century, Cecilius advanced, without hesitation, "that "the obscurity in which this religion was concealed "proved the truth of a part of the crimes imputed "to it. Why this necessity for hiding themselves "and concealing their worship from the public eye, "since men fear not to expose to light what is fair "and good?" So also at the conclusion of the first age or the commencement of the second, Celsus, the philosopher, frequently referred to the secrecy of the mysteries, and bitterly attacked the affected privacy of christianity, &c.:

If the apostles and their disciples had made no mystery of the Eucharist, if in the three first ages, Jews and Pagans, unbelievers and catechumens, had

been acquainted with its doctrine and practice, what need would there have been to put christians to the torture, in order to extort from them a confession of the crimes imputed to them? And yet Pliny the younger, governor of Bithynia, in the account he gave to Trajan of the christians, says, on occasion of the reports which were circulating in the world about them, "that he had on that account "deemed it the more necessary to interrogate on the "rack, two women who were said to have ministered "in their secret assemblies. But I found nothing, "adds he, more than an ill regulated and excessive "superstition." Do we not know moreover from a fragment of Irenæus, that, in the persecution at Lyons, the Roman magistrates upon the irregular deposition of some slaves, persuaded themselves that the christians actually practised what was laid to their charge, and endeavoured by torments to get an acknowledgment to that effect from Blandina? But this christian slave replied with a freedom full of wisdom; "How should those, who through piety "abstain from meats otherwise lawful to eat, be "capable of doing the things you impute to us?” Be pleased to observe this last instance of concealment in the heroic Blandina: we shall soon have occasion to refer to it again. Do we not know also from Eusebius, to whom we are indebted for the admirable letter of the christians of Lyons to those of Asia, that Biblis, one of those who had been weak enough to deny their faith, "was put to the "torture that she might be forced to confess the "impieties imputed to the christians? The torments

'Pliny's letter to Trajan, in 105.-In Ecumenius, year 177.