eir
expectations. It was concluded, that they only concealed what they
would have 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."

But the perusal of the ancient apologies was sufficient to remove
even the slightest suspicion from the mind of a candid adversary. The
Christians, with the intrepid security of innocence, appeal from the
voice of rumor to the equity of the magistrates. They acknowledge, that
if any proof can be produced of the crimes which calumny has imputed to
them, they are worthy of the most severe punishment. They provoke the
punishment, and they challenge the proof. At the same time they urge,
with equal truth and propriety, that the charge is not less devoid of
probability, than it is destitute of evidence; they ask, whether any
one can seriously believe that the pure and holy precepts of the gospel,
which so frequently restrain the use of the most lawful enjoyments,
should inculcate the practice of the most abominable crimes; that a
large society should resolve to dishonor itself in the eyes of its own
members; and that a great number of persons of either sex, and every age
and character, insensib