(e) Justin Martyr. — The ecclesiastical term for the Supper is henceforth ' the I^ucharist.' Justin makes no mention of the Agape. The Eucharist C9ases to be a meal of the congregation and be- comes a regular part of the Sunday service, and seems to i-erjuii-e the presence of a bishop or some other official for its valid celebration {Apol. i. 65- 67). Under the growing tendency towards ritual it began to gather to itself some of the Jewish, or perhaps heathen, sacrificial ideas centring in a special priesthood. Indeed Justin sees in the mysteries of Mithras a demonic imitation of Chris- tian symbolism {Apol. i. 54, 62, 65-67 ; Dial. c. Trypho, 70, 78). The ideas of Ignatius are in Justin losing their purity. He continues to spealc of the Supper as a spiritual life-giving food, but holds that a material change passes upon the elements of the sacrament, so that they nourish our bodies and make them incorruptilile, the Logos becoming united by the Eucharistic prayer with the bread,
as He took flesh and l)lood when He became in- carnate in Jesus {Apol. i. 0(5 ; Loofs, PRE^ i. 40, 41, 45, 46; Swete, JThSt, iii. 109 f.). Uarnack put forward a theory that bread and water were the usual elements in the Eucharist at the time of Justin, but it has received little approval, for the most that can be said is that the practice existed among some small sects in Africa (7'C/'vii. 2, 117-144, outlined by Utewavt, Expos. July 1898, 43 ff.).
A variety of causes led to the discontinuance of the celebration of the Agape along with the Lord's Supper, (a) The increase of abuses as they are founil already in 1 Cor. and Jude. (6) The growth of the Church in large cities, where it became im- possible for the Christians to meet together in house-celebrations, (c) The increasing power of the bishop and clergy, who found in house-gatherings a menace to the unity of the Church, together with the development of the dogma that the presence of a bishop was necessary to make a Supjier valid. (d) Charges of child-murder and cannibalism {OviffTfta deiirva, ol5nro5eiovs /Ui^eis). (e) The en- forcement of the Imperial law against associations (see Drews, PRE^y. ' Eucharistie'). The change, already widespread in the time of Justin Martyr, whereby the Supper is deflnitely called ' the Eucharist ' and becomes the central part of public service, was of vast consequence, and gradually spread over the whole Church, transforming the conception of worship. In Tertullian's circle the Eucharist is celebrated in the early morning and the Agape is held in the evening (Ajiol. 39, de Corona, 3). But authorities differ as to the com- pleteness of the separation at Alexandria in Clem- ent's day. Bigg, e.g., saying that 'the Eucharist was not distinguished in time, ritual, or motive from the primitive Supper of the Lord' (Christian Platonists, 102, 103), while Mayor is doubtful (Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. 382), and Zahn is strongly of the contrary opinion (PRE^ ' Agapen,' 234).
7. The Lord's Supper and the pagan IVlysteries. — Dr. Percy Gardner may be taken as a repre- sentative of a few scholars who trace the influence of the pagan Mysteries on St. Paul.
'The great ditference between the teachin;? of tlie Synoptic Jesus on the one hand, and the teachin<? of Paul, of the Fourth Evanjfelist, and of the author of Hebrews on the other, is just that the latter is permeated, as the former is not, by the ideas of si)iritual communion, of salvation, of justification, and mediation — ideas which had found an utterance, however im- perfect, in the teachini? of the t/iitini. . . . C^hristians are, like the Pagan Mystie, called upon to be ocriotand oiyioi. The language of the Pauline and .Johannine writings shows tlie translation of Christianity on to a new level by the reception and baptism into Christ of a set of ideas wliich at the time, coming from a Divine source, were making their way into the various religions of the liuman race ' ( E.rplor. Evangel, p. 340 tf.). II. .J. lloltzmann also liolds that in separating the sacrament as a specifically religious act unrelated to the kernel of his gospel, Paul opened the gates to ' mystery ' concei)tions {NT Theol. ii. ISfi, 1S7).
But the sacrament of the Supper was In exist- ence before St. Paul, and its import well estab- lished in the Jewish section of the Church before the gospel went to the Gentiles, who for many decades were not sufficiently influential to stamp the sacrament with ' mystery ' conceptions even if they had so desired. All this type of thought was alien to the Jewish mind, the only section of the nation that was in sympathy with these ideas being the Essenes, who derived their sacra- mental meals — in some sort ' mystery ' associa- tions— from foreign sources, and they cainaot be regarded as a factor in the shajjing of the Chris- tian rite (Bousset, BeA. des Jtidenthiims, 431-443). It is quite gratuitous to say that the ideas of spiritual communion, salvation, justification, and mediation are especially Pauline or Johannine. They had, in fact, a long history in Hebrew thought, and while they are frequent in 'mystery' ritual, their import is different. The pagan Mysteries,
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■veil in their purest expression, were tainted with the religions conceptions of old nature-worships. F"elIowship through sacraments with the Divine was thought to bring an infusion of the subtle material essence of the god, who thus held present communion with the initiated, and vouchsafed immortality to him. This was the result not so much of a moral act of faith as of an iinpre.ssion produced upon the character by the vision of the Divine drama. Contemplation and ecstasy crown the course of the initiated. A rigorous ethical discipline was also required by waj- of preparation for the vision of the Divine, but inasmuch as the purpose was to free the soul from its prison-house in the flesh, the purification was chieflj' of a cere- monial character. The soul cleansed of earthly impurities would ascend after death into final union with the Supreme (see Dill. Eoman Society from Xero to Marcus Aurelius, Bk. iv. chs. v. vi.). Of sin in the Christian sense there is little trace in pagan thought. Such sin as the worshipper was freed from in the heathen Mysteries was inherent in him by reason of human frailty, or was an outward taint of the body (Anrich, Das antike Jli/sterienioescn, 38). When in the 2nd cent, these subtle shades began to colour Christian thought, it was a sign that the full summer was pass- ing.