inued till after midnight, or even till
daybreak. It was only natural that mixed assemblies of men and women
that gathered in this manner, and where there was eating and drinking,
should create scandal. It is absolutely certain that some of this
scandal had a basis in fact. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould confesses that "at
Corinth, and certainly elsewhere, among excitable people, the wine, the
heat, the exaltation of emotion, led to orgiastic ravings, the jabbering
of disconnected, unintelligible words, to fits, convulsions, pious
exclamations, and incoherent ravings." And unless St. Paul was
deliberately slandering his fellow-believers worse things than these
occurred.

Generally, even by non-Christian writers, it has been assumed that the
Agapae commenced as a perfectly harmless, even admirable institution, and
afterwards degenerated, and so gave genuine cause for scandal. It is not
easy to see that this opinion rests on anything better than a mere
prejudice. It is true that there is no unmistakable evidence to the
contrary, but no clear evidence is to be found in its behalf. The Agapae
was not, after all, an essentially Christian institution. Similar
gatherings existed among the Pagans, more or less orgiastic in
character. And even though at first some of the more extreme forms were
avoided amongst the Christians, it is not improbable, on the face of it,
that some kind of sexual extravagance or symbolism was present from the
outset. At any rate, as I have said, the charges were made, first by
Pagans, afterwards by Christians against other Christians. The charges
were persistent, and were made in districts far removed from each other.
Says Lecky: "When the Pagans accused the Christians of indulging in
orgies of gross licentiousness, the first apologist, while repudiating
the charge, was careful to add, of the heretics, 'Whether or not these
people commit those shameful acts ... I know not.' In a few years the
language of doubt and insinuation was exchanged for that of direct
assertion; and if we may believe St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of
Alexandria, the followers of Carpocrates, the Marcionites, and some
other gnostic sects habitually indulged, in their secret meetings, in
acts of impurity and licentiousness as hideous and as monstrous as can
be conceived, and their conduct was one of the causes of the persecution
of the orthodox."[126] Tertullian accused some of the sects of
practising incestuous intercourse at the Agapae