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The joiners, the weavers, the cartwrights, the smiths, the hewers of wood, the milkers of cows, the knitters, the sewers, the cooks, the washerwomen all had their special lovefeasts. At one time the joyful discovery was made that a Brother had served a year in the kitchen, and was ready to serve another; and thereupon the whole settlement held a general lovefeast in his honour.
This remarkable liberality drew the attention of the Pope, who said in an encyclical that the heretics were putting to shame the offerings of the faithful. Not a few meetings took the form of lovefeasts, where generous giving proved the reality of the religious experiences; for there has ever been an intimate connexion between the fellowship and the finance of Methodism.
Lovefeasts are the olive branch which we have received from the revered hands of our fathers and mothers in the faith, not to be cast away, but to be prized and kept as a mark of our love for them, for each other, and for Christ our Saviour; and though the green branch which they left us may be somewhat faded, and its leaves droop in our moistureless hands, though it has lost some of the freshness it had when it first came to our keeping, thank God! thank God! it is not dead, it lives! and can be revived.
The number of lovefeasts was enormous. At the opening of the harvest season the farm labourers held an early morning lovefeast; the discourse was partly on spiritual topics and partly on rules of diet; then the sickles were handed out; and the whole band, with hymns of praise on their lips, set off for the harvest field.
Meredith then points out how in Rome, in Lyons, in Vienne, "the Christians were actually accused of murdering children and others of committing adultery, incest, and other flagrant crimes in their secret lovefeasts.
Is it probable that persons at Rome, who had once belonged to these lovefeasts, should tell a deliberate falsehood that the Christians perpetrated these abominable vices, and that other persons in France, who had also been connected with these feasts, should falsely state that the Christians were guilty of the very same execrable crimes?
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