Note 17 — Chapter V · ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMICS

For the dispersed Jews, held by a racial tie, association was a matter of course. Marked off by religion if not by aspect from Gentiles everywhere, they were a community within the Gentile community. For the first Jesuists, association was not thus a matter of course all round. For the slaves, seeking friendship, and the poor, seeking help, it may have been; but the more prosperous were for that very reason less spontaneously attracted. The fundamental tie was the so-called “Eucharist,” which at first, in varying forms, was probably only an annual rite: the agapae or love feasts were common to the multitude of pagan associations. Accordingly many adherents tended to “forsake the assembling of themselves together,”17 and it was plainly the function of the bishop to act upon these. Not only the Epistle to the Hebrews and that of Jude but those of Barnabas and Ignatius, and The Shepherd of Hermas, anxiously or sternly urge the duty of regular meeting. Addresses by bishops and “prophets” would be natural means of promoting the end.