It is one of the most striking facts in all history that in the second century the Christians were universally believed by Pagans to be secret conspirators combined for immoral purposes, and at their trials it was sufficient for a man to confess that he was a Christian to be condemned as a licentious villain. The assertions made in regard to them were that they met in secret, that slaughtering an infant they poured his blood into a cup, and that passing this cup round they all drank of it; that then the lights were extinguished, and the men and women proceeded to indiscriminate licentiousness. How could such ideas have arisen? An explanation of this reveals to us marked peculiarities of the early Church in the treatment of women, and may help us to see how the later opinions arose. Christianity came at first in the fervour of an overpowering love--love to God and love to man, irrespective of his race, position, or belief. But this fervour of love directed itself with special force to those who accepted the same faith. They called each other fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters. They were in the habit of assembling before dawn or at night, men and women together, in private houses, to conduct their worship. The assembly consisted of a strange assortment of characters and grades. The Apostle Paul,[135] in writing to the Corinthian Church, says to them: “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor cheats, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor plunderers, shall inherit the Kingdom of God: and these things were some of you.” And there were in the assembly the bond and the free, the rich and the poor, the high and low, but with a large preponderance of the low. It was natural for a heathen to suppose that an assembly composed, as he would consider it, of the dregs of society, and meeting in hours of darkness, had no good object in view. And the account which they themselves gave of their worship sounded to a Pagan equally contemptible. The Christians affirmed that they worshipped a poor carpenter, a son of despised Galilee, the child of a husbandless mother. Then they spoke of eating a body and drinking blood. But perhaps colour was given to the accusation most of all by two institutions which have now passed away, except in the case of one or two small sects.