So marked, indeed, was the sacramental character of these Peruvian communion feasts, that a Spanish Jesuit missionary to that country, three centuries ago, was disposed to see in them an invention of Satan, rather than a survival of a world-wide primitive custom. He said: “That which is most admirable in the hatred and presumption of Sathan is, that he not only counterfeited in idolatry and sacrifices, but also in certain ceremonies, our sacraments, which Jesus Christ our Lord instituted, and the Holy Church uses; having, especially, pretended to imitate, in some sort, the sacrament of the communion, which is the most high and divine of all others.”[368] Yet again, a prisoner of war would be selected to represent one of the gods, and so to be partaken of, in inter-communion through his blood. He would receive the name of the god; and for a longer or a shorter time,--“sometimes a year, sometimes six months, and sometimes less,”--he would be ministered to, and would receive honors and reverence as a god. Then he would be offered in sacrifice. His heart would be presented to the god. His blood would be employed reverently--as was the case with all sacrifices--in token of covenanting. His flesh would be eaten by the worshipers of the god whom he represented.[369] This “rite of dressing and worshiping the sacrifices like the deities themselves, is related as being performed at the festivals of many gods and goddesses.”[370] A remarkable illustration of the unity of the race, and of the universal sweep of these customs in conjunction with the symbolism of the blood-covenant, is found in the similarity of this last named Central American practice, with a practice charged upon the Jews by Apion, as replied to by Josephus. The charge is, that “Antiochus found, upon entering the temple [at Jerusalem], a man lying upon a bed, with a table before him, set out with all the delicacies that either sea or land could afford.” This captive’s story was: “I am a Greek, and wandering up and down in quest of the means of subsistence, was taken up by some foreigners, brought to this place, and shut up.... They gave me to understand, that the Jews had a custom among them, once a year, upon a certain day prefixed, to seize upon a Grecian stranger, and when they had kept him fattening one whole year, to take him into a wood, and offer him up for a sacrifice according to their own form, _taking a taste of his blood_, with a horrid oath to live and die sworn enemies to the Greeks.”[371] Baseless as was this charge against the Jews, its very framing indicates the existence in the East,--possibly among the Phœnicians,--in days prior to the Christian era, as well as in pre-historic times in the West, of the custom of seeking inter-communion with God, or with the gods, by the tasting of the blood of a substitute human victim, offered in sacrifice to God, or to the gods.