of the early church, which, unwilling to give what is holy to dogs, or to cast pearls before swine concealed from all persons, except the faithful, the mysteries of faith.  It would seem from St. Justin’s apology, that much was left to the particular devotion of the bishop or priest who offered mass, and hence we might expect not to find in the earliest liturgies great uniformity, except in essentials and general outline.  Yet Le Brun has endeavoured to restore, from the early Christian writers, the liturgy used in the first four centuries:  and it contains the most important prayers and ceremonies of the mass in its more modern form.

[Sidenote:  Discipline of secrecy.]

We shall so often have to recur to the discipline of secrecy alluded to above, that we consider it necessary to speak of it briefly, before we proceed further.  The Pythagoreans, the Stoics, Plato, the Epicureans and other ancient philosophers concealed their doctrines from the uninitiated:  the mysteries also of Osiris, Isis, Bacchus, Ceres, Cybele etc. were carefully kept secret.  There was no novelty therefore for the ancients in the discipline of secrecy, the institution of which in the Christian church is attributed by many fathers to Christ himself, who directed that his disciples should not “give what is holy to dogs, or cast pearls before swine”.  Matt.  VII, 6.  This injunction was observed by the whole church from the apostolic age till the fifth century in the east, and the sixth century in the west:  it extended to dogmas as well as rites, and in particular to those of the holy Trinity and the sacraments, especially the blessed Eucharist[5].  For “those things” says St. Cyril of Alexandria “are generally derided, which are not understood” adv.  Julianum.  The pagans, at the instigation, it would appear, of the Jews and early heretics, availed themselves of this secret discipline to charge the Christians with the detestable crimes of Oedipus and Thyestes, pretending that in their secret assemblies they murdered an infant covered with flour, and drank his blood. (Cecilius ap.  Minut.  Fel.) It was solely with the view of refuting these calumnies, that Justin Martyr explained, in his apology addressed to Antoninus Pius, the catholic doctrine of the eucharist.  S. Blandina on the contrary endured the most cruel torments rather than reveal it, though its profession would have confuted the same odious calumnies; and S. Augustine observes a similar reserve when answering the pagan Maximus Madaurensis.

“Who” says the protestant Casaubon “is so little versed in the writings of the fathers, as to be ignorant of the formulary used principally of the sacraments, the initiated understand what is said:  it occurs at least fifty times in Chrysostom, and almost as frequently in Augustine”.  S. Fulgentius inserts in his answer to the deacon Ferrandus the following words of S. Augustine to the neophytes “This which you see on the altar of God you saw last night: