table; the latter, in allusion to the heathen and early Christian mysteries, and the former, in reference to the children sacrificed at the Agapae.  The great doctrine of transubstantiation directly points to the abominable practice of eating human flesh at the Agapae....  Upon the whole, it is impossible, from the mass of evidence already adduced, to avoid the conclusion that the early Christians, in their Agapae, were really guilty of the execrable vices with which they were so often charged, and for which they were sentenced to death.  This once admitted, a reasonable and adequate cause can be assigned for the severe persecutions of the Christians by the Roman Government—­a Government which applied precisely the same laws and modes of persecution and punishment to them as to the votaries of the Bacchanalian and Eleusinian mysteries, well known to have been accustomed to offer human sacrifices, and indulge in the most obscene lasciviousness in their secret assemblies; and a Government which tolerated all kinds of religions, except those which encouraged practices dangerous to human life, or pernicious to the morals of subjects.  Nor can the facts already advanced fail to show clearly that the Christian Agapae were of Pagan origin—­were identically the same as those Pagan feasts which existed simultaneously with them” (Ibid, notes, pp. 227, 231).

There can be no doubt that the Christians suffered for these crimes whether or no they were guilty of them:  “Three things are alleged against us:  Atheism, Thyestean feasts, OEdipodean intercourse,” says Athenagoras ("Apology,” ch. iii).  Justin Martyr refers to the same charges ("2nd Apology,” ch. xii).  “Monsters of wickedness, we are accused of observing a holy rite, in which we kill a little child and then eat it, in which after the feast we practise incest....  Come, plunge your knife into the babe, enemy of none, accused of none, child of all; or if that is another’s work, simply take your place beside a human being dying before he has really lived, await the departure of the lately-given soul, receive the fresh young blood, saturate your bread with it, freely partake” ("Apology,” Tertullian, secs. 7, 8).  Tertullian pleads earnestly that these accusations were false:  “if you cannot do it, you ought not to believe it of others.  For a Christian is a man as well as you” (Ibid).  Yet, when Tertullian became a Montanist, he declared that these very crimes were committed at the Agapae, so that he spoke falsely either in the one case or in the other.  “It was sometimes faintly insinuated, and sometimes boldly asserted, that the same bloody sacrifices and the same incestuous festivals, which were so falsely ascribed to the orthodox believers, were in reality celebrated by the Marcionites, by the Carpocratians, and by several other sects of the Gnostics....  Accusations of a similar kind were retorted upon the Church by the schismatics who had departed from its communion; and it was confessed on all sides that the most scandalous