Enoch."

evidence of this, according to Hammer-Purgstall, is to be found “I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves in the architectural decorations of the Templars' churches. to God when we had been made new through Christ. As many

An elaborate criticism of Hammer-Purgstall's arguments was made as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, in the Journal des Savans, March and April 1819, by M. Raynouard, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to a well-known defender of the Templars. (See also Hallam, Middle pray and entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their Ages, c. i. note 15.)

sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they BAPTISM. The Gr. words Battlo uós and Bártuoua (both are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in of which occur in the New Testament) signify "ceremonial the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For washing," from the verb Bantiśw, the shorter form Bantw in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of meaning “ dip” without ritual significance (c.g. the finger in our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive water, a robe in blood). That a ritual washing away of sin the washing with water." characterized other religions than the Christian, the Fathers of In the sequel Justin adds: the church were aware, and Tertullian notices, in his tract On “There is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, Baptism (ch. v.), that the votaries of Isis and Mithras were and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord initiated per lavacrum, " through a font," and that in the Ludi of the universe, he who leads to the laver the person that is to Apollinares et Eleusinii

, s.e. the
mysteries of Apollo and Eleusis

, be washed calling Him by this name alone. For no one can utter men were baptized (tinguntur, Tertullian's favourite word for the name of the ineffable God, and this washing is called Illuminabaptism), and, what is more, baptized, as they presumed to tion (Gr. OwTlO uós), because they who learn these things are think," unto regeneration and exemption from the guilt of their illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus perjurics.” “ Among the ancients," he adds, “anyone who Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name had stained himself with homicide went in scarch of waters of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things that could purge him of his guilt.”

about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed.” The texts of the New Testament relating to Christian baptism, In ch. xiv. of the dialogue with Trypho, Justin asserts, as given roughly in chronological order, are the following:- against Jewish rites of ablution, that Christian baptism alone

A.D. 55-60, Rom. vi. 3, 4; 1 Cor. i. 12-17, vi. 11, X. 1-4, xii. 13, can purify those who have repented. “This," he says, “is the XV. 29; Gal. iii. 27.

water of life. But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves A.D. 60-65, Col. ii. II, 12; Eph. iv. 5, v. 26.

are broken and profitless to you. For what is the use of that A.D. 60-70, Mark x. 38, 39.

baptism which cleanses the flesh and body alone? Baptize A.D. 80-90, Acts i. 5, ii. 38-41, viii. 16, 17, X. 44-48, xix. 1-7, the soul from wrath, from envy and from hatred; and, lo! xxii. 16; 1 Pet. Üï. 20, 21;,Heb. x. 22.

the body is pure." A.D. 90-100, John iii. 3-8, iii. 22, iii. 26, iv. 1, 2.

In ch. xliii. of the same dialogue Justin remarks that "those Uncertain, Matt. xxvii. 18–20; Mark xvi. 16.

who have approached God through Jesus Christ have received The baptism of John is mentioned in the following: a circumcision, not carnal, but spiritual, after the manner of A.D. 60–70, Mark i. I-II.

A.D. 80-90, Matt. iii. 1-16.; Luke iïi. 1-22, vii. 29, 30; Acts i. 22, In after ages baptism was regularly called illumination. Late X. 37, xiii. 24, xviii. 25, xix. 3, 4.

in the 2nd century Tertullian describes the rite of baptism in A.D. 90-100, John i. 25-33, iii. 23, x. 40.

his treatise On the Resurrection of the Flesh, thus: It is best to defer the question of the origin of Christian 1. The flesh is washed, that the soul may be freed from stain. baptism until the history of the rite in the centuries which 2. The flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated. followed has been sketched, for we know more clearly what 3. The flesh is sealed (i.e. signed with the cross), that the soul baptism became after the year 100 than what it was before. And also may be protected. that method on which a great scholar' insisted when studying 4. The flesh is overshadowed with imposition of hands, that the old Persian religion is doubly to be insisted on in the study the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit. of the history of baptism and the cognate institution, the 5. The flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the eucharist, namely, to avoid equally " the narrowness of mind soul also may be filled and sated with God. which clings to matters of fact without rising to their cause and 6. He also mentions elsewhere that the neophytes, after connecting them with the series of associated phenomena, and baptism, were given a draught of milk and honey. (The candithe wild and uncontrolled spirit of comparison, which. by com- date for baptism, we further learn from his tract On Baptism, paring everything, confounds everything."

prepared himself by prayer, fasting and keeping of vigils.) Our earliest detailed accounts of baptism are in the Teaching Before stepping into the font, which both sexes did quite naked, of the Apostles (0.90-120) and in Justin Martyr.

the neophytes had to renounce the devil, his pomps and angels. The Teaching has the following

Baptisms were usually conferred at Easter and in the season of 1. Now concerning baptism, thus baptize ye: having spoken Pentecost which ensued, and by the bishop or by priests and beforehand all these things, baptize into the name of the Father deacons commissioned by him. and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in living water.

Such are the leading features of the rite in Tertullian, and they 2. But if thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; reappear in the 4th century in the rites of all the orthodox if thou canst not in cold, in warm.

churches of East and West; Tertullian testifies that the 3. But if thou hast not either, pour water upon the head Marcionites observed the particulars numbered one to six, which thrice, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy must therefore go back at least to the year 150. About the year Spirit.

300, those desirous of being baptized were (a) admitted to the 4. Now before the baptism, let him that is baptizing and catechumenate, giving in their names to the bishop. (b) They him that is being baptized fast, and any others who can; but were subjected to a scrutiny and prepared, as to-day in the thou biddest him who is being baptized to fast one or two days western churches the young are prepared for confirmation. before.

The catechetic course included instruction in monotheism, in The" things spoken beforehand "are the moral precepts known the folly of polytheism, in the Christian scheme of salvation, as the two ways, the one of life and the other of death, with which &c. (c) They were again and again exorcized, in order to rid the tract begins. This body of moral teaching is older than the them of the lingering taint of the worship of demons. (d) Some rest of the tract, and may go back to the year A.D. 80.

days or even weeks beforehand they had the creed recited to Justin thus describes the rite in ch. Isi. of his first A pology, them. They might not write it down, but learned it by heart (c. 140):

and had to repeat it just before baptism. This rite was called * James Darmesteter, in " Introd. to the Vendidad," in the Sacred in the West the traditio and redditio of the symbol. The Lord's Books of the East.

Prayer was communicated with similar solemnity in the West

them; Pope Nicholas, however (858–867), in the Responsa ad responsible for the past life of the candidate and for the sincerity consulta Bulgarorum, allowed baptism to be valid tantum in of his faith and repentance. The essential thing was that a man nomine Christi, as in the Acts. Basil, in his work on the Holy should come to baptism of his own free will and not under Spirit just mentioned, condemns “baptism into the Lord compulsion or from hope of gain. Macarius of Jerusalem (op. cit.) alone " as insufficient. Baptism “into the death of Christ " is declares that the grace of the spirit is given in answer to our often specified by the Armenian fathers as that which alone was prayers and entreaties for it, and that even a font is not needful, essential.

but only the wish and desire for grace. Tertullian, however, in Ursinus, an African monk (in Gennad. de Sa. Ecd. xxvii.), his work On Baptism, holds that even that is not always enough. Hilary (de Synodis, lxxxv.), the synod of Nemours (A.D. 1284), Some girls and boys at Carthage had asked to be baptized, and also asserted that baptism into the name of Christ alone was there were some who urged the granting of their request on the valid. The formula of Rome is, "I baptize thee in the name score that Christ said: "Forbid them not to come unto Me" of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” In the East,“ so-and-so,(Matt. xix. 14), and: "To each that asketh thee give" (Luke vi. the servant of God, is baptized,” &c. The Greeks add Amen after 30). Tertullian replies that “ We must beware of giving the holy each person, and conclude with the words, "Now and ever and thing to dogs and of casting pearls before swine." He cites to acons of aeons, amen.”

1 Tim. v. 22: "Lay not on thy hands hastily, lest thou share in We first find in Tertullian trine immersion explained from the another's sins.” He denies that the precedents of the eunuch triple invocation, Nam nec semel, sed ter, ad singula nomina in baptized by Philip or of Paul baptized without hesitation by personas singulas linguimur: “Not once, but thrice, for the Simon (to which the other party appealed) were relevant. He several names, 'into the several persons, are we dipped” (adv. dwells on the risk run by the sponsors, in case the candidates for Prax. xxvi.). And Jerome says: “We are thrice plunged, that whose purity they went bail should fall into sin. It is more the one sacrament of the Trinity may be shown forth.” On the expedient, he concludes, to delay baptism. Why should persons other hand, in numerous fathers of East and West, c.8. Leo of still in the age of innocence be in a hurry to be baptized and win Rome, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Theophylactus, Cyril of remission of sins? Let people first learn to feel their need of Jerusalem and others, trine immersion was regarded as being salvation, so that we may be sure of giving it only to those who symbolic of the three days' entombment of Christ; and in the really want it. Especially let the unmarried postpone it. The Armenian baptismal rubric this intepretation is enjoined, as risks of the age of puberty are extreme. Let people have married also in an epistle of Macarius of Jerusalem addressed to the or be anyhow steeled in continence before they are admitted to Armenians (c. 330). In Armenian writers this interpretation is baptism. It would appear from the homilies of Aphraates further associated with the idea of baptism into the death of (c. 340) that in the Syriac church also it was usual to renounce Christ.

the married relation after baptism. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Trine immersion then, as to the origin of which Basil confesses Catecheses; insists on the longing for the heavenly polity, on his ignorance, must be older than either of the rival explanations. the goodly resolution and attendant hope ” of the catechumen These are clearly aetiological, and invented to explain an existing (Pro. Cat. ch. i.). If the resolution be not genuine, the bodily custom, which the church had adopted from its pagan medium. washing, he says, profits nothing. “God asks for nothing else For pagan lustrations were normally threefold; thus Virgil except a goodly determination. Say not: How can my sins be writes (Aen. vi. 229): Ter socios pura circumtulit unda. Ovid wiped out? I tell thee, by willing, by believing" (ch. viii.). (Met. vii. 189 and Fasti, iv. 315), Persius (ii. 16) and Horace So again (Cat. I. ch. iii.) “God gives not his holy treasures to the (Ep. i. 1. 37) similarly speak of trine lustrations; and on the dogs; but where he sees the goodly determination, there he last mentioned passage the scholiast Acro remarks: "He uses bestows the seed of salvation. ... Those then who would the words thrice purely, because people in expiating their sins, receive the spiritual saving seal have need of a determination plunge themselves in thrice.” Such examples of the ancient and will of their own. ... Grace has need of faith on our part." usage encounter us everywhere in Greek and Latin antiquity. In Jerusalem, therefore, whither believers flocked from all over 6. Age of Baptism.- In the oldest Greek, Armenian, Syrian Christendom to be buried, the official point

of view as late as and other rites of baptism, a service of giving a Christian (i... A.D. 350 was entirely that of Tertullian. Tertullian's scruples non-pagan) name, or of sealing a child on its eighth day, is found. were not long respected in Carthage, for in Cyprian's works According to it the priest, either at the door of the church or at (c. 250.) we already hear of new-born infants being baptized. In the home, blessed the infant, sealed it (this not in Armenia) with the same region of Africa, however, Monica would not let her son the sign of the cross on its forehead, and prayed that in due Augustine be baptized in boyhood, though he clamoured to be. season (ev kaupq@ evderw) or at the proper time (Armenian) it She was a conservative. In the Greek world thirty was a usual may enter the holy Catholic church. This rite announces itself age in the 4th century for persons to be baptized, in imitation of as the analogue of Christ's circumcision.

Christ. It is still the age preferred by the Baptists of Armenia. On the fortieth day from birth another rite is prescribed, of But it was often delayed until the deathbed, for the primitive churching the child, which is now taken into the church with its idea that mortal sins committed after baptism were sins against mother. Both are blessed by the clergy, whose petition now is the Holy Spirit and unforgivable, still influenced men, and that God "may preserve this child and cause him to grow up by survived among the Cathars up to the 14th century. The fathers, the unseen grace of His power and made him worthy in due season however, of the 4th century emphasized already the danger of of the washing of baptism." As the first rite corresponds to the deferring the rite until men fall into mortal sickness, when they circumcision and naming of Jesus, so does the second to His may be unconscious or paralysed or otherwise unable to profess presentation in the temple. These two rites really begin the their faith and repentance, or to swallow the viaticum. Gregory catechumenate or period of instruction in the faith and discipline Theologus therefore (c. 340) suggests the age of three years as of the church. It depended on the individual how long he would suitable for baptism, because by then a child is old enough, if not wait for initiation. Whenever he felt inclined, he gave in his to understand the questions put to him, at any rate to speak and name as a candidate. This was usually done at the beginning of make the necessary responses. Gregory sanctions the baptism Lent. The bishop and clergy next examined the candidates one of infants only where there is imminent danger of death." It by one, and ascertained from their neighbours whether they had is better that they should be sanctified without their own sense led such exemplary lives as to be worthy of admission. In case of it than that they pass away unsealed and uninitiated.” And of strangers from another church certificates of character had he justifies his view by this, that circumcision, which foreshadowed to be produced. If a man seemed unworthy, the bishop dis- the Christian seal (copayis), was imposed on the eighth day on missed him until another occasion, when he might be worthier; those who as yet had no use of reason. He also urges the analogue but if all was satisfactory he was admitted, in the West as a of the anointing

of the doorposts, which preserved the first-born competens or asker, in the East as a writóuevos, i.e. one in by things that have no sense." On such grounds was justified course of being illumined. Usually two sponsors made themselves the transition of a baptism which began as a spontaneous act of

self-consecration into an opus operatum. How long after this it | was before infant baptism became normal inside the Byzantine church, we do not exactly know, but it was natural that mothers should insist on their children being liberated from Satan and safeguarded from demons as soon as might be. The change came more quickly in Latin than in Greek Christendom, and very slowly indeed in the Armenian and Georgian churches. Augustine's insistence on original sin, a doctrine never quite accepted in his sense in the East, hurried on the change.

7. Confirmation.-In the West, however, the sacrament has been saved from becoming merely magical by the rite of confirmation or of reception of the Spirit being separated from the baptism of regeneration and reserved for an adult age. The English church confirms at fifteen or sixteen; the Roman rather earlier. The catechetic course, which formerly preceded the complete rite, now intervenes between its two halves; and the sponsors who formerly attested the worthiness of the candidate and received him up as anadochi out of the font, have become god-parents, who take the baptismal vows vicariously for infants who cannot answer for themselves. In the East,on the contrary, the complete rite is read over the child, who is thus confirmed from the first. The Roman church already foreshadowed the change and gave a peculiar salience to confirmation as early as the 3rd century, when it decreed that persons already baptized by heretics, but reverting to the church should not be baptized over again, but only have hands laid on them. It was otherwise in Africa and the East. Here they insisted in such cases on a repetition of the entire rite, baptism and confirmation together. The Cathars (9.7.) of the middle ages discarded water baptism altogether as being a Jewish rite, but retained the laying on of hands with the traditio precis as sufficient initiation. This they called the spiritual baptism, and interpreted Matt. xxviii. 19, as a command to practise it, and not water baptism.

re-birth alone being insisted upon in vv. 3, 6, 7 and 8; moreover, Justin Martyr, who cites v. 5, seems to omit them. Nor is there any mention of water in ch. i. 13, where, according to the oldest text, Christ is represented as having been born or begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

In 1 Pet. i. 3, it is said of the saints that God the Father begat them anew unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus, and in v. 23 that they have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible through the word of God. But here again it is not clear that the writer has in view water baptism or any rite at all as the means and occasion of regeneration. In the conversation with Nicodemus we seem to overhear a protest against the growing tendency of the last years of the 1st century to substitute formal sacraments for the free afflatus of the spirit, and to "crib, cabin and confine" the gift of prophecy. The passage where re-birth is best put forward in connexion with baptism is Luke iii. 22, where ancient texts, including the Gospel of the Hebrews, read, “Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten Thee." These words were taken in the sense that Jesus was then re-born of the Spirit an adoptive Son of God and Messiah; and with this reading is bound up the entire adoptionist school of Christology. It apparently underlies the symbolizing of Christ as a fish in the art of the catacombs, and in the literature of the 2nd century. Tertullian prefaces with this idea his work on baptism. Nos pisciculi secundum IXOTN nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur. "We little fishes, after the example of our Fish Jesus Christ, are born in the water." So about the year 440 the Gaulish poet Orientius wrote of Christ; Piscis natus aquis, auctor baptismatis ipse est. "A fish born of the waters is himself originator of baptism." But before his time and within a hundred years of Tertullian this symbolism in its original significance had become heretical, and the orthodox were thrown back on another explanation of it. This was that the word IXOTE is made up of the letters which begin the Greek words meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." An entire mythology soon grew up around the idea of re-birth. The font was viewed as the womb of the virgin mother church, who was in some congregations, for example, in the early churches of Gaul, no abstraction, but a divine acon watching over and sympathizing with the children of her womb, the recipient even of hymns of praise and humble supplications. Other mythoplastic growths succeeded, one of which must be noticed. The sponsors or anadochi, who, after the introduction of infant baptism came to be called god-fathers and god-mothers, were really in a spiritual relation to the children they took up out of the font. This relation was soon by the canonists identified with the blood-tie which connects real parents with their offspring, and the corollary drawn that children, who in baptism had the same god-parent, were real brothers and sisters, who might not marry either each the other or real children of the said god-parent. The reformed churches have set aside this

8. Disciplina arcani.-The communication to the candidates of the Creed and Lord's Prayer was a solemn rite. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his instruction of the catechumens, urges them to learn the Creed by heart, but not write it down. On no account must they divulge it to unbaptized persons. The same rule already meets us in Clement of Alexandria before the year 200. In time this rule gave rise to what is called the Disciplina arcani. Following the fashion of the pagan mysteries in which men were only permitted to gaze upon the sacred objects after minute lustrations and scrupulous purifications, Christian teachers came to represent the Creed, Lord's Prayer and Lord's Supper as mysteries to be guarded in silence and never divulged either to the unbaptized or to the pagans. And yet Justin Martyr, Tertullian and other apologists of the 2nd century had found nothing to conceal from the eye and ear of pagan emperors and their ministers. In the 3rd century this love of mystification reached the pitch of hiding even the gospels from the unclean eyes of pagans. Probably Mgr. Pierre Battifol' is correct in supposing that the Disciplina arcani was more or less of a makebelieve, a bit of belletristic trifling on the part of the over-fiction, but in the Latin and Eastern churches it has created a rhetorical Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries. It is in them that the atmosphere of mystery attains a maximum of intensity. They clearly felt themselves called upon to out-trump the pagan Mystae. Yet it is inconceivable that men and women should spend years, even whole lives, as catechumens within the pale of the church, and really remain ignorant all the time of the Trinitarian Epiclesis used in baptism, of the Creed, and above all of the Lord's Prayer. Wherever the Disciplina arcani, i.e. the obligation to keep secret the formula of the threefold name, the creed based on it and the Lord's Prayer, was taken seriously, it was akin to the scruple which exists everywhere among primitive religionists against revealing to the profane the knowledge of a powerful name or magic formula. The name of a deity was often kept secret and not allowed to be written down, as among the Jews. 9. Regeneration.-The idea of regeneration seldom occurs in the New Testament, and perhaps not at all in connexion with baptism; for in the conversation with Nicodemus, John iii. 3-8, the words "of water and "in v. 5 offend the context, spiritual 'Etudes historiques, Essai sur Disc. arc. (Paris 1902).

distinct and very powerful marriage taboo.

10. Relation to Repentance.-Baptism justified the believer, that is to say, constituted him a saint whose past sins were abolished. Sin after baptism excluded the sinner afresh from the divine grace and from the sacraments. He fell back into the status of a catechumen, and it was much discussed from the 2nd century onwards whether he could be restored to the church at all, and, if so, how. A rite was devised, called exhomologesis, by which, after a fresh term of repentance, marked by austerities more strict than any Trappist monk imposes on himself to-day, the persons lapsed from grace could re-enter the church. In effect this rite was a repetition of baptism, the water of the font alone being omitted. Such restoration could in the earlier church only be effected once. A second lapse from the state of grace entailed perpetual exclusion from the sacraments, the means of salvation. As has been remarked above, the terror of postbaptismal sin and the fact that only one restoration was allowable influenced many as late as the 4th century to remain catechumens all their lives, and, like Constantine, to receive baptism on the