there a mysterious service was celebrated from which all outside were strictly excluded, so also here was introduced an exclusive eucharistic service. These observances are rather to be regarded as having grown up independently out of the inmost being of Christianity; but the church having found certain institutions existing inspired by a wholly different spirit, yet outwardly analogous and sanctioned by the state, it appropriated, as far as practicable, their forms of social organization, in order to secure for itself the advantages of civil protection. That even on the part of the pagans, down into the last half of the second century, the Christian congregational fellowship was regarded as a special kind of the mystery-communities, is shown by Lucian’s satire, _De morte Peregrini_ (§ 23, 1), where the description of Christian communities, in which its hero for a time played a part, is full of technical terms which were current in those associations. “It is also,” says Weingarten, “expressly acknowledged in Tertullian’s _Apologeticus_, c. 38, 39, written about A.D. 198, that even down to the close of the second century, the Christian church was organized in accordance with the rules of the _Collegia funeraticia_, so that it might claim from the state the privileges of the _Factiones licitæ_. The arrangements for burial and the Christian institutions connected therewith are shown to have been carefully subsumed under forms that were admitted to be legal.”