They Would Eat No Blood

● Minucius Felix, a Latin writer of the third century of our Common Era, wrote a dialogue entitled “Octavius.” In it he sought to refute charges brought against professed Christians of his day. One story that had been circulated was that they drank blood, being “initiated by the slaughter and blood of an infant.” After outlining pagan practices that showed gross disregard for life and the sanctity of blood, Minucius Felix showed that those avowing Christianity at that time had respect for God’s law on blood. He wrote: “They [the heathen] also are not unlike to him who devour the wild beasts from the arena, besmeared and stained with blood, or fattened with the limbs or the entrails of men. To us it is not lawful either to see or to hear of homicide; and so much do we shrink from human blood, that we do not use the blood even of eatable animals in our food.” (The Octavius of Minucius Felix, Chap. XXX, as published in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume IV, pages 191, 192) It is noteworthy that as late as the third century C.E. those claiming to follow Christ possessed an attitude toward blood that was Scriptural and not unlike that of true Christians today.​—Gen. 9:3, 4; Acts 15:28, 29; 21:25.