of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of
sins: Matth. XXVI, 26. In this brief account are mentioned all the
_essential_ parts of the mass. Christ commanded the apostles and
through them their successors to perform the same holy rite "in
commemoration" of Him, and they obeyed His commands, as we learn from
the acts of the apostles, and the first epistle to the Corinthians.

[Sidenote: Its early ceremonies.]

Gradually various prayers and ceremonies were added to the sacred
words pronounced by Christ, as the Apology of St. Justin, the writings
of St. Cyprian, the catechetical discourses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem
and other early works prove. The Apostles themselves had added the
Lord's prayer[3]. The liturgy however during the first four centuries,
as Le Brun maintains[4], or, according to Muratori followed by Palmer,
the first three centuries, was not written, but was preserved by oral
tradition, according to the received practice of the early church,
which, unwilling to give what is holy to dogs, or to cast pearls
before swine concealed from all persons, except the faithful, the
mysteries of faith. It would seem from St. Justin's apology, that
much was left to the particular devotion of the bishop or priest who
offered mass, and hence we might expect not to find in the earliest
liturgies great uniformity, except in essentials and general outline.
Yet Le Brun has endeavoured to restore, from the early Christian
writers, the liturgy used in the first four centuries: and it contains
the most important prayers and ceremonies of the mass in its more
modern form.

[Sidenote: Discipline of secrecy.]