in the baptism of three thousand of these transgressors.  “Repent,” says he, “and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you and to your children.” [478:1] Tertullian would have given them no such encouragement.  But the Montanists believed that their Phrygian Paraclete was commissioned to supersede the apostolic discipline.  When the African father attacked infant baptism he obviously acted under this conviction; and whilst seeking to set aside the arrangements of the Church of his own age, he felt no scruple in venturing at the same time to subvert an institute of primitive Christianity.

We have the clearest evidence that, little more than twenty years after the death of Tertullian, the whole Church of Africa recognised the propriety of this practice.  About the middle of the third century a bishop of that country, named Fidus, appears to have taken up the idea that, when administering the ordinance, he was bound to adhere to the very letter of the law relative to circumcision, [478:2] and that therefore he was not at liberty to baptize the child before the eighth day after its birth.  When the case was submitted to Cyprian and an African Synod, consisting of sixty-six bishops, they unanimously decided that these scruples were groundless; and, in an epistle addressed to the pastor who entertained them, the Assembly thus communicated the result of its deliberations—­“As regards the case of infants who, you say, should not be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, and that respect should be had to the law of the ancient circumcision, whence you think that one newly born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, we all in our council thought very differently....  If even to the most grievous offenders, ... when they afterwards believe, remission of sins is granted, and no one is debarred from baptism and grace, how much more ought not an infant to be debarred who, being newly born, has in no way sinned, except that being born after Adam in the flesh, he has by his first birth contracted the contagion of the old death; who is on this very account more easily admitted to receive remission of sins, in that, not his own, but another’s sins are remitted to him.” [479:1]

Whilst it is thus apparent that the baptism of infants was the established order of the Church, it is equally clear that the particular mode of administration was not considered essential to the validity of the ordinance.  It was usually dispensed by immersion or affusion, [479:2] but when the health of the candidate might have been injured by such an ordeal, sprinkling was deemed sufficient.  Aspersion was commonly employed in the case of the sick, and was known by the designation of clinic or bed baptism.  Cyprian points out to one of his correspondents the absurdity of the idea that the extent to which the water is