understand what ye fay; nor when ye are polluted until ye wafh your felves. If ye find no water take fine clean fand, and rub your faces and your hands therewith. When ye prepare yourselves to pray, wash your faces and your hands unto the elbows, and rub your hands and your feet unto the ancles, and if ye be polluted....wafh yourfelves all over." Mohammed imagined two fountains of water near the gate of his paradife, of the one the bleffed are to drink, and in the other they are to wash.

The Mohammedan ablutions differ from those of the ancient Pagans in one respect. The washings of the old heathens were either derived from their own obfervation, or from the customs of their earliest ancestors, or from a fanciful fuperftition: but thofe of Mohammed are evidently copied from Judaifm, as a comparison of the feveral cafes that required ablution would eafily demonftrate.

Ablutions for fenfual, civil, and medical purposes, are omitted here; for they do not belong to an effay on religious rites. It is very probable that the ceremony of washing before worship was a patriarchal custom, and that all nations derived it originally from their common ancestors, in the most remote antiquity; but this conjecture is not neceffary, for the purity of God is an idea fo natural, the connection between his purity and that of his worshippers fo obvious, and the fignifying of thefe notions by washing the body with pure water fo very confequential, that there is nothing wonderful, myfterious, or unaccountable, in a fimilarity of practice.

СНАР. XII.

Of Baptifteries.

T should seem then, the primitive Chriftians in the empire were under Ia a neceffity of baptizing in open waters, or, where they had not private baths of their own, of conftructing baptifteries for the exprefs purpose of adminiftering baptifm. Authors are not agreed about the time when the first baptifteries were built. All agree that the firft were, like the manners and conditions of the people, very fimple, and merely for use, and that in the end they rofe to as high a degree of elegant fuperftition,

as

as enthusiasm could invent. The Catholicks affirm, that the Emperour Conftantine built a moft magnificent baptiftery at Rome, and was himself with his fon Crifpus baptized there; and in evidence they produce fome ancient records, and fhew a princely baptiftery at the Lateran to this day (1). Proteftants, influenced they think by better authority from authentick hiftory, prove, that the emperour fell fick at Conftantinople, went to the hot baths at Helenopolis, and from thence to Nicomedia, and in the fuburbs of that city was baptized by Eufebius. They say, he deferred his baptifm, as many more did, till he found his conftitution breaking up, and himself just going to the grave. Some think he was baptized twice, and departed an Unitarian Anabaptift.

It is not impoffible, it may be hoped, to reconcile the difference between learned writers concerning the time, when Chriftians erected publick edifices. Suicer, Vedėlius, and others affirm, that the primitive Chriftians had no diftinct places of worship for the first three centuries (2). Bingham, Mede, and others deny this, and endeavour to prove that Chriftians had publick places of worship in the third, fecond, and even first century (3). Both fides appeal to the fathers, and for this very reafon the difpute may be comfortably fettled. Every body knows the style of thofe primitive writers is fo full of tropes, figures, and allufions, that half the difficulty of understanding them lies in determining when they speak literally, and when they depart from this firft law of all perfpicuous and polished writers. In the prefent cafe they are charged with directly contradicting one another; for Origen, Minutius Felix, Arnobius, and others, affirm, Chriftians had no temples: on the contrary, many of equal authority fay they had, and what is more extraordinary, Lactantius, and fome other fathers contradict themfelves, and fay they had, and they had not. The most probable conjecture is, that when they fpeak of temples among primitive Chriftians, they mean Chriftians themselves, especially chriftian affemblies; for fo they had figuratively temples, and they may be very well allowed to expatiate on the worth, and even the majefty of the materials. When they affirm they had no temples, they fpeak literally of fuch edifices as the Pagans had, for it is allowed on all hands that they affembled in their own houses, and if there be any faith in ancient monuments, often in obscure and remote places, and particularly in fuch fubterranean caverns as the Italians call catacombs. Thefe cavities are very numerous about three miles from Rome, and about Naples, and many other parts. It is fuppofed many of them were dug by the inhabitants for materials to build,. (1) ANASTASIUS....BARONIUS.. DURANT, &c.....SAM. BASNAGII Annales Politico Eccles. Tom, i.. An. 337, p. 762....Rossi Roma moderna.. D. S. Gio. Battista in fonte....FAMIANI NARDINI Roma vet. apud Græv.

(2) SUICER. Thefaur. Eccles. Naç....VEDEL. Exercitat, in Ignatii. Epift. ad Ephef. 4. (3) BINGHAM. Origines Eccles. Book viii. chap. 1.

for here they found both ftone and a cement, which the Neapolitans call La pozzolane. They fhew one at Naples, where S. Januarius is represented as preaching by the light of two lamps to fome primitive Chriftians (4). There are now in the kingdom of Naples, not including Sicily, one hundred and twenty-three bishopricks, and the inhabitants of Naples are computed at three hundred and fifty thoufand: but they are not afhamed to own this conventicler for their founder and patron. He was martyred at the latter-end of the third century, and the liquefaction of his blood is famous all over Europe.

To return. Baptifteries are to be firft fought for where they were first wanted, in towns and cities; for writers of unquestionable authority affirm, that the primitive Chriftians continued to baptize in rivers, pools, and baths, till about the middle of the third century (5). Juftin Martyr (6) fays, that they went with the catechumens to a place where there was water, and Tertullian (7) adds, that candidates for baptifm made a profeffion of faith twice, once in the church, that is, before the congregation in the place where they affembled to worship, and then again when they came to the water, and it was quite indifferent whether it were the fea or a pool, a lake, a river, or a bath. About the middle of the third century baptifteries began to be built: but there were none within the churches till the fixth century; and it is remarkable that, though there were many churches in one city, yet (with a few exceptions) there was but one baptiftery. This fimple circumftance became in time a title to dominion, and the congregation nearest the baptiftery, and to whom in fome places it belonged, and by whom it was lent to

(4) ANTON-CARACCIOLI. De fac. Eccles. Neap. monum. Neap. 1645. P. 189...Vue des Catacombs des Naples. Tom. i. Part i. Page 80. Voyage Pittorefque..J. P. BELLORI. M. A. CAUSSEL. Picture Antique Cryptarum Roman, &c.....Lucernæ.............Ex cavernis Romæ fubterraneis collecta, &c.

(5) Writers. PAULLI M. PACIAUDII Antiq. Chriftian. Diff. ii. Cap. 1, 2, &c. De Baptifteriis. - - - Roma 1755....WALAFRIDI STRABONIS, De reb. Eccles. lib. Cap. 26.....JOAN. STEPH. DURANT De Rit. Eccles. Lib. i. Cap. xix. De Baptifterio. Parifiis 1631.....JOSEPHI VICECOMITIS Obfervat. Eccles. Tom. i. Lib. i. Cap. 4. An baptifteria femper in ecclefia fuerint? Et de more in fluminibus, fontibus, viis, ac carceribus baptizandi, Mediolani. 1615.... JOAN. CIAMPINI Vetera Monimenta. Cap. xxv. De Ecclefia S. Joannis in fonte, &c. Roma 1690.....MAZOCCHI Diff. Hift. De Cathed. Eccl. Neapolitana femper unica. Neapoli 1751.. Du CANGII. Gloffar. Baptifterium....SULPICII SEVERI Dial. ii. 5.....BINGHAM's Antiquities. Book viii. Of the Baptifery. Cum multis aliis, De facris chriftianorum.

(6) JUSTINI MART. Apol. ii.

(7) TERTULLIAN1 De baptifmo. Cap. 4. Stagno, Flumine, Fonte, Lacu, Alveo. See Du CANGE. Alveum vas ita dictum ab ISIDORO lib. xx. Orig. Cap. 6. Quod in ablutionem fieri folitum fit....Paffio S. S. PERPETUA et FELICITATIS. Et oftendit illis lactis alvea puro corde fpumantia per lucidam eleemofynam, &c. Eadam vox legitur in Glofs. et apud Innoc. Agrimens, et ut pro vafe, ita et pro canali quandoque fumi poteft....De alveis et alveolis vide FK. ROBORTELL. de fudat apud Grævium.

the