secrated bread was called _host_,
which word signifies a _victim_ offered _as sacrifice_, anciently
_human_ very often.... Jerome and other Fathers called the communion
bread--_little body_, and the communion table--_mystical 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