The Roman government suppressed the later Bacchanalian and Eleusinian feasts, together with the Christian Agapae, because of their debaucheries, obscenities, and supposed infant sacrifices. Meredith, in "The Prophet of Nazareth" (pp. 225-231), institutes an examination to ascertain "how far the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian feasts resembled the Christian Agapae." His conclusion is that the facts "show clearly that the Christian Agapae were of pagan origin--were identically the same as the pagan feasts." Gibbon says: "The language of that great historian [Tacitus, in his allusion to Christians] is almost similar to the style employed by Livy, when he relates the introduction and the suppression of the rites of Bacchus" (Rome, vol. 1, P. 579). Referring to the Agapae, Dr. Cave says it was commonly charged that Christians "exercised lust and filthiness under a pretense of religion, promiscuously calling themselves brothers and sisters, that by the help of so sacred a name their common adulteries might become incestuous" (Primitive Christianity, Part II, chap. v). Describing the Carpocratians, an early Christian sect, Dr. Cave says: "Both men and women used to meet at supper (which was called their love-feast), when after they had loaded themselves with a plentiful meal, to prevent all shame, if they had any remaining, they put out the lights, and then promiscuously mixed in filthiness with one another" (Ibid). The "International Cyclopedia" says: "With the increase of wealth and the decay of religious earnestness and purity in the Christian church, the Agapae became occasions of great riotousness and debaucheries." The Agapae, with their excesses eliminated, survive in the love-feasts of modern Christians. Webster defines "love-feast" as "a religious festival, held quarterly by the Methodists, in imitation of the Agapae of the early Christians." That these mysteries of Bacchus and Ceres were adopted by the early Christians is largely admitted by the great church historian himself. Writing of the second century, Mosheim says: "The profound respect paid to the Greek and Roman mysteries, and the extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to them, was a further circumstance that induced the Christians to give their religion a mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal foot, in point of dignity, with that of the Pagans. For this purpose they gave the name of 'mysteries' to the institutions of the gospel, and decorated particularly the holy Sacrament with that solemn title. They used in that sacred institution, as also in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in the heathen mysteries and proceeded so far at length as even to adopt some of the rites and ceremonies of which these renowned mysteries consisted." (Ecclesiastical History, p. 56.)