TERTULLIAN, L. C. “ Who are those who have made known to the world these pretended crimes? are they those who are accused? But how could it be so, since it is the common law of all mysteries to keep them secret? If they themselves made no discoveries, it must have been made by strangers : but how could they have had any knowledge of them, since the profane are excluded from the sight of the most holy mysteries, and those carefully selected, who are permitted to be spectators.” Apol. c. vii. p. 674. Paris, 1580.
Such was the secrecy observed in the first ages, that the Pagans found it necessary to employ punishments, in order to extort from the Christians the secret of what passed in their assemblies. “The reports,” says Pliny the younger to the Emperor Trajan,“ which were spread abroad against them, made me consider it the more necessary to extort the truth, by the force of torments, from two female slaves, who were said to belong to the ministry of their worship; but I discovered nothing, except a bad superstition carried to excess.” L. x. Ep. cxvii.—The same is recorded in the admirable letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne to those of Asia and Phrygia, preserved by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. L. v. c. 1.); and also in St. Justin's Apology.
These calumnies and cruelties, and therefore this discipline of the secret, are as ancient as the name of Christian. Celsus, who was born within fifty years after the death of Christ, though he wrote soon after the close of the first century, often reproaches the Christians with their secret practices. In his reply, Origen acknowledges that “there are certain points not communicated to every one; but this is so far from being peculiar to the Christians, that it was observed among the philosophers, as well as ourselves. Celsus, therefore, attempts in vain to deny the secret kept by the Christians, since he does not know in what it consists.”
