blushed to disclose. Their mistaken prudence afforded an
opportunity for malice to invent, and for suspicious credulity to
believe, the horrid tales which described the Christians as the
most wicked of human kind, who practised in their dark recesses
every abomination that a depraved fancy could suggest, and who
solicited the favor of their unknown God by the sacrifice of
every moral virtue. There were many who pretended to confess or
to relate the ceremonies of this abhorred society. It was
asserted, "that a new-born infant, entirely covered over with
flour, was presented, like some mystic symbol of initiation, to
the knife of the proselyte, who unknowingly inflicted many a
secret and mortal wound on the innocent victim of his error; that
as soon as the cruel deed was perpetrated, the sectaries drank up
the blood, greedily tore asunder the quivering members, and
pledged themselves to eternal secrecy, by a mutual consciousness
of guilt. It was as confidently affirmed, that this inhuman
sacrifice was succeeded by a suitable entertainment, in which
intemperance served as a provocative to brutal lust; till, at the
appointed moment, the lights were suddenly extinguished, shame
was banished, nature was forgotten; and, as accident might
direct, the darkness of the night was polluted by the incestuous
commerce of sisters and brothers, of sons and of mothers." ^19

[Footnote 18: See Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p.
101, and Spanheim, Remarques sur les Caesars de Julien, p. 468,
&c.]
[Footnote 19: See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35, ii. 14.
Athenagoras, in Legation, c. 27. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 7, 8, 9.

Minucius Felix, c. 9, 10, 80, 31. The last of these writers