the love feast ending with the Lord’s Supper. But there is no mention of ritual or liturgy. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea about A.D. 375, in Book 27, of his work On the Holy Spirit, admitted that the liturgy of consecrating the Eucharist is not set down in the “writings of the saints.” He justifies it, as he does other current practices, by the oral tradition of the church of his day. The first Christian congregations were formed by splitting off from the meetings of the Jewish synagogues.