DISCIPLINA ARCANA. The name given to the secret ritual and practices of the first Christian Church. The dis ciples of Christ had scarcely formed themselves into a brotherhood, before the instinct of self-preservation compelled them to retire into secrecy, and throw over themselves and all their proceedings the vail of mystery. The ancient docu ments known as the "Apostolical Constitutions and Canons" often speak of the Disciplina Arcana, or secret discipline of the most ancient church. Irenmas, Tertullian, Clemens, Origen, and Gregory, of Nyssa, also furnish abundant proofs that the primitive church was a secret society. Indeed, so well known was this peculiar organization that nearly all ancient writers, Christian or Pagan, have noticed the fact. Lucian of Samosata speaks of Christ as a magician who established new mysteries. Pliny, also, informs us that the Christians were persecuted in the reign of Trojan, not on account of their religion, but as a secret society, under a general law of the empire which prohibited all "secret associations." The arcana of the primitive disciples were
comprised in four circles, which the neophyte was re quired to traverse before he could participate in the most sacred mysteries of the church. The central light of truth shone in its full splendor only on those who had at tained to the highest degree. They were styled: 1. Oi the Faithful; 2. Photizomenoi, the Enlightened; 3. lilemue menoi, the Initiated ; 4. Teleioumenoi, the Perfect. The terms mustai, and musta gogetoi are often used in this connec tion, and, in short, all the phraseology which profane writers employ in describing an initiation into their mysteries. In deed the right of baptism itself has an evident relation, as Cyril of Jerusalem represents, to the initiatory rites of Isis, Eleusis, Samothrace and Phrygia.*