children of God, ^a. rJJs 7rurr««>s lv XpwrTw 'I770-0V. Ephesians i. 15, " After I heard of your, ttlo-tlv lv rw Kvpiiu 'I^o-oS," and many others of like kind. In like manner because the instrumental force of lv is rare in the classics, it is avoided as much as possible in the Scriptures. Baptism lv Trvevpari, instead of being understood as meaning a baptism by, or with the Spirit, is made to mean " in the sphere of the Spirit," and baptism lv irvpi, baptism " in the sphere of fire." What this means, it would be difficult for most of those for whom the Bible is intended to understand. The bap- tism of John and that of Christ are contrasted. The one baptized with water , the other with the Holy Spirit. In Acts i. 5, it is said, " John truly baptized with water (ySari, the simple instru- mental dative) ; but ye shall be baptized («v UvevfxarL ay«o) with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." As to baptize vSan can- not mean to immerse in water, so neither can baptizing lv tw UvcvfxaTi mean immersing in the Spirit. The fact is fiairrtfciv does not express any particular mode of action. As to dye, expresses any kind of action by which an object is coloured ; to bury, any kind of action by which an object is hidden and protected ; so to baptize, expresses any act by which a person or thing is brought into the state of being wet, purified, or even stupefied, as by opium or wine.
Another passage in which this word occurs where the idea of immersion is precluded, is 1 Corinthians x. 1, 2, " All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea ; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." The peo- ple went through the sea dry shod. As far as known not a drop of water touched them. The cloud referred to was doubtless the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night which guided the people through the wilderness. The simple and generally accepted meaning of the passage is, that as a man is brought by Christian baptism into the number of the professed and avowed disciples of Christ, so the Hebrews were brought by the super- natural manifestations of divine power specified, into the relation of disciples and followers to Moses. There is no allusion to im- mersion, affusion, or sprinkling in the case.
Another passage belonging to this class is Mark vii. 4, " When they come from the market, except they wash (fiairrurmnai), they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen ves- sels, and of tables (*Aiv<oi/, couches)." To maintain that beds or couches were immersed, is a mere act of desperation. Baptism
534 PART HI. Ch. XX. — the means of grace.
means here, as it does everywhere when used of a religious rite, symbolical purification by water, without the slightest reference to the mode in which that purification was effected.
3. The third class of passages includes all those in which the idea of immersion, though not absolutely precluded, is to the last degree improbable. The late Dr. Edward Robinson, than whom there is no higher authority on all that relates to the topography and physical geography of Palestine and the habits of its in- habitants, so far as they are determined by the nature of the country, says : (1.) " The idea of private baths in families in Jerusalem and Palestine generally is excluded." (2.) " In Acts ii. 41, three thousand persons are said to have been baptized at Jerusalem apparently in one day at the season of Pentecost in June ; and in Acts iv. 4, the same rite is necessarily implied in respect to five thousand more. Against the idea of full immer- sion in these cases there lies a difficulty, apparently insuperable, in the scarcity of water. There is in summer no running stream in the vicinity of Jerusalem, except the mere rill of Siloam a few rods in length ; and the city is and was supplied with water from its cisterns and public reservoirs.1 From neither of these sources could a supply have been well obtained for the immersion of eight thousand persons. The same scarcity of water forbade the use of private baths as a general custom ; and thus also further precludes the idea of bathing" in such passages as Luke xi. 38 ; Mark vii. 2-8. He confirms his conclusion by further remarking, (3.) " In the earliest Latin versions of the New Tes- tament, as, for example, the Itala, which Augustine regarded as the best of all,2 which goes back apparently to the second century and to usage connected with the apostolic age, the Greek verb, £a7TTt£a>, is uniformly given in the Latin form, " baptizo," and is never translated by u immergo," or any like word, showing that there was something in the rite of baptism to which the latter did not correspond.8 (4.) The baptismal fonts still found4 among the ruins of the most ancient Greek churches in Palestine, as at Tekoa and Gophna, and going back apparently to very early times, are not large enough to admit of the baptism of adult persons by immersion, and were obviously never intended for that
use
"5
1 See Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. i. pp. 479-516.
2 De Doctrina Christiana, ii. 22 [xv.] ; Works, edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1836, vol. iii. p. 54, d.
8 See Blanchini, Evangeliorum Quadruples), etc., Rom. 1749.
4 See Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine, edit. Boston, 1841, vol. ii. p. 182; vol. Iii. p. 78. * See Robinson's Lexicon of the New Testament, word Bam-ifr, New Tor1- ™W»-