Excerpt from Legends of the Blessed Sacrament: Gathered From the History of the Church and the Lives of the Saints

Through the preaching Of the holy Apostles Christians began to multiply in every city, SO that in the year 66 the heathen historian Tacitus spoke Of them in Rome as being innumerable. NO wonder, then, as Satan found his reign coming to an end, that he should arise, and with hellish devices endeavour to root out the Christian name from the face Of the earth. The heathen, to whom the preaching Of the Cross was foolishness, were his willing agents, and SO much the more as the pure lives Of the Christians were a silent judgment upon their own. Ye Shall be hated Of all men, for My name's sake, ' began from the earliest days to be verified.

The combination of simplicity and mystery which surrounded the name Of Christians, and which defied all attempts to be unravelled, excited so much the more distrust as it was impossible to find any true and Specific charge to lay against them. Every kind Of imaginable wickedness was therefore imputed to them; and the mysterious tradition which reached the ears Of the heathen through the mouth Of the Jews, that in the feast Of the Christians they made an Offering in which they received the flesh and the blood Of the victim, was the cause Of the frightful accusation laid to their charge of offering up innocent children in order that they might eat their flesh and drink their blood. The meaning of the doctrine Of the Most Holy Eucharist as well as the solemn ceremonies connected with it were hidden from the heathen, seeing that this supreme Mystery belonged to the secret teaching Of the Church.

SO secret, indeed, were all the circumstances relating to this most glorious Sacrament kept, that no unbaptised person was permitted to receive instruction on it, and catechumens were dismissed from the churches ere the most solemn part Of the Mysteries began. TO speak Of them before the uninitiated was SO great a crime that only heretics and apostates dared to do it.

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