[478:1] Acts ii. 38, 39.

[478:2] Gen. xvii. 12; Lev. xii. 3.

[479:1] Epist. lix. pp. 211, 212.

[479:2] Laurentius, a Roman deacon, who flourished about the middle of the third century, is represented as baptizing one Romanus, a soldier, in a pitcher of water, and another individual, named Lucillus, by pouring water upon his head.  See Bingham, iii. 599.

[480:1] Here the validity of the ordinance is made to depend upon the personal character of the administrator.

[480:2] Epist. lxxvi. p. 321.

[480:3] Epist. lxxiv. p. 295.

[480:4] Epist. lxxvi. p. 317.  In like manner Clement of Alexandria says—­“Our transgressions are remitted by one sovereign medicine, the baptism according to the Word.”  See Kaye’s “Clement,” p. 437.

[480:5] Epist. lxx. p. 269.

[480:6] Tertullian, “De Baptismo,” c. 1.

[480:7] Cyprian, “Con.  Carthag.” pp. 600, 602.

[480:8] See Kaye’s “Clement of Alexandria,” p. 441, and Tertullian, “De Corona,” c. 3.

[480:9] Tertullian, “De Baptismo,” c. 7.

[480:10] Tertullian, “De Baptismo,” c. 8.

[481:1] “De Resurrectione Carnis,” c. 8.

[481:2] “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”—­Matt, xxviii. 19.

[481:3] Bingham, iii. 377.

[483:1] Rev. xxii. 18, 19.

[484:1] “Apol.” ii.  Opera, pp. 97, 98.

[485:1] In an article on the Roman Catacombs, in the “Edinburgh Review” for January 1859, the writer observes—­“It is apparent from all the paintings of Christian feasts, whether of the Agapae, or the burial feasts of the dead, or the Communion of the Holy Sacrament, that they were celebrated by the early Christians sitting round a table.”

[485:2] This calumny created much prejudice against them in the second century.  See Justin Martyr’s “Dialogue with Trypho,” Sec. 10; and the “Apology of Athenagoras,” Sec. 3.  If Pliny refers to the Eucharist when he speaks of the early Christians as partaking of food together, it is obvious that they must then have communicated sitting, or in the posture in which they partook of their ordinary meals.

[485:3] Tertullian, “De Oratione,” c. 14.

[485:4] See Euseb. vii. 9.

[485:5] Justin Martyr, “Apol.” ii. 98; and Tertullian’s “Apol.” c. 39.

[486:1] Epist. lxiii.  “To Caecilius,” Opera, p. 229.

[486:2] Larroque’s “History of the Eucharist,” p. 35.  London, 1684.

[486:3] Cyprian, “De Lapsis,” Opera, pp. 375, 381.  This was probably the result of carrying to excess a protest against the Montanist opposition to infant baptism.  Such a reaction often occurs.  It was now maintained that the Lord’s Supper, as well as Baptism, should be administered to infants.

[486:4] At an earlier period it was dispensed in presence of the catechumens.  See Bingham, iii. p. 380.