It is celebrated in the evening, and is accompanied by the ancient love feast (partaken by all communicants seated at a common table), by the ceremony of the washing of feet and by the salutation of the holy kiss, the three last-named ceremonies being observed by the sexes separately.
On New Year's Day, 1739, the Wesleys, Whitefield and other friends had a Love Feast at Fetter Lane.
The class-meeting, the love-feast, the watch-night, the covenant service, leaders, stewards, lay preachers, all were the fruit of this readiness to avail himself of suggestions made by men or events.
That catechumens could not participate in the agape or love-feast (of which in this epoch the Eucharist was merely an episode) does not give to those feasts the character of a Greek mystery.
The Eucharist formed part of an agape or love feast until the end of the 2nd century, and in parts of Christendom continued to be so much later.
