II.

(See p. 383, cap. ii. note 1.)

The early disappearance of the Christian agapae may probably be attributed to the terrible abuse of the word here referred to, by the licentious Carpocratians. The genuine agapae were of apostolic origin (2

Pet. ii. 13; Jude 12), but were often abused by hypocrites, even under the apostolic eye (1 Corinthians 11:21). In the Gallican Church, a survival or relic of these feasts of charity is seen in the pain baeni; and, in the Greek churches. in the antidoron or eulogiae distributed to non-communicants at the close of the Eucharist, from the loaf out of which the bread of oblation is supposed to have been cut.