matical sense of these words that many learned men suppose the pool of Bethesda, which is said to be by the sheep market, or rather by the sheep gate, to have been a place where sheep were washed before they were offered to the priests for sacrifice. Whether these names were given to christian baptisteries because they were built after the model of Bethesda, which is not an improbable conjecture; or whether they were so called from a fanciful parallel between Besthesda and a baptistery, is not certain. A genuine father would readily find many resemblances between halt, sick and impotent people and the fallen sons of Adam; the nature of sheep and the qualities of Christians; washing in a pool before sacrifice on a mountain, and baptism in this valley of tears before ascending to the Lamb in the midst of the throne. The first is the most likely, because a baptistery was like Bethesda, a pool, in a court surrounded with cloisters: but the last is not improbable; for allegory can do any thing; and certain it is, Tertullian, Optatus, and others, who called themselves fish, ran the parallel too far. 'You," says Tertullian to some who denied baptism, "you act naturally, for you are serpents, and serpents love deserts, and avoid water; but we, like fishes, are born in the water, and are safe by continuing in it."

Such

There were in process of time baptisteries at most o the principal churches of Rome, as at those of St. Peter, St. Laurence, St. Agnes, St. Pancras, and others (7). The church of St. Agnes is a small rotund, and it is said a baptistery adjacent was erected, for the baptism of Constantia, sister of the Emperor Constantine (8). Some think the church itself was the baptistery. The most ancient is that at St. John Lateran (9). baptisteries were erected, separate from the churches, in all the principal cities of Italy, as Florence, Ravenna, Milan, Pisa, Parma, and the rest; but in one point these cities differed from that at Rome: at Rome there were many in other Italian cities only one at first; in the middle ages two, an unitarian and a trinitarian; and in modern times only one, and that, the trinitarian or catholick. Some are yet standing: the memory of

(7) Johan. Mabillon. Iter. Ital. Tom. i. xxv.

(8) Ciampini Vet. Mon. Cap. xxvi.

(9) Giovanni. Villani Storia Fiorenza, 1587. Lib. i. Cap. lx.

others is preserved in records, and monumental fragments; and the place of others is now supplied by fonts within the churches. The convenience extended the custom of erecting baptisteries, and improving them. Linus built one at Besancon over a stream, which Onnasius the tribune gave him for the purpose. That at Aquileia was placed close to the river Alsa, and all were set either over running water, or near it, or so that pipes conveyed it into the pool. The octagon form was either suggested by the form of the principal room of a Roman bath, or of a Gaulish temple at Milan and the latter is the most probable. If so the Gauls are the remote ancestors; and Milan the immediate parent of octagon baptisteries. It doth not now seem necessary to investigate the history of that of St. John Lateran at Rome. Some attribute it to the Emperor Constantine, others to different Pontiffs: but all must and do allow, that the primitive edifice hath yielded to time and accidents, and that the present baptistery, though very ancient, is not the original building.

CHAP. XIII.

OF THE BAPTISTERY OF ST. SOPHIA AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

CONSTANTINE the Roman Emperor, soon after he had given full liberty to Christians, and embraced the profession of Christianity himself, removed the seat of empire from Rome in Italy to Byzantium in Thrace; and having enlarged, enriched, and adorned it, solemnly conferred on it his own name, and called it Constantinople, that is, Constantine's city. It remains one of the most magnificent cities of the East to this day. For ages it was the seat of the eastern or Greek empire, and it is now the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and from its admirable port, is often simply called the Porte.

Here his imperial majesty erected the spacious and splendid church of St. Sophia. Succeeding emperors amplified and adorned it. Justinian at an immense cost rebuilt it, and his artists, with elegance and magnificence, distributed variegated marbles of exquisite beauty, gold, silver, ivory, mosaick work, and endless

ornaments, so as to produce the most agreeable and lasting effects on all beholders.

The baptistery was one of the appendages of this spacious palace, something in the style of a convocation-room in a cathedral. It was very large, and councils have been held in it, and it was called Meya Palcoruptor, the great Illuminatory (1). In the middle was the bath, in which baptism was administered; it was supplied by pipes, and there were outer rooms for all concerned in the baptism of immersion, the only baptism of the place.

Every thing in the church of St. Sophia goes to prove, that baptism was administered by trine immersion, and only to instructed persons: the canon laws, the officers, the established rituals, the Lent sermons of the prelates, and the baptism of the archbishops themselves.

1. Canon law. The Greeks divided their institutes into two classes, the scriptural and the traditional. The division was merely speculative, for they thought both equally binding. Basil gives an instance in baptism. (2). The scripture says, Go ye, teach and baptize, and tradition adds, Baptize by trine immersion, and "if any bishop or presbyter shall administer baptism not by three dippings but by one, let him be punished with deprivation ()." At what time this canon was made, and by whom it was first called an apostolical canon, is uncertain; but it was early received for law by the established Greek church, it was in full force when the cathedral of St. Sophia was built, and no person durst baptize any other way in the Sophian baptistery.

2. The officers. In the church of St. Sophia there were eighty presbyters, one hundred and fifty deacons, seventy subdeacons, and forty deaconesses, beside catechists and others. A catechist was an ecclesiastical tutor, whose immediate business it was by instructing catechumens in the principles of religion, to prepare them during the thirty days of Lent for baptism at Easter. Two sorts of women were called deaconesses

(1) Du Fresne in Paul. Silent. Descript. S. Sophiæ notæ. lxxxii. Bap-,

tisterium.

(2) Op. De sancto spiritu. Cap. xxviii.

Canon Apost. 1. Ει τις επίσκοπος, η πρεσβύτερος μη τρια βαπτισμαία, δε Zonara Com. in Can. Apost.

in the oriental and Greek churches. The first were the wives of deacons; for all church officers formerly communicated their titles to their wives, and even to their mistresses. Thus Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, kept a Venetian lady named Pascha di Riveri, by whom he had children, and she was called patriarchess (4). The wives of bishops, presbyters, deacons and subdeacons, were called bishopesses, presbyteresses, deaconesses, and subdeaconesses (5). The second are deaconesses properly so called, because they officiated in the services of religion, and chiefly in the administration of baptism to their own sex (6). The office of deaconesses continued in all churches, eastern and western, till the eleventh century, then it fell into disuse, first in the Roman church (7), and then in the Greek (8), but it continued longer in the oriental churches (9); and the Nestorian hath deaconesses to this day (1). The duration of these female officers is allowed to afford probable proof of the duration of the baptism of adults by immersion (2).

3. Rituals. All the ancient Greek rituals have instructed catechumens for the subjects of baptism, and trine immersion for the mode (3).

4. Lent-sermons. The archbishop of St. Sophia says, they baptized at Easter, and the forty days preceding were devoted to religion. They abstained from certain foods, as fish and fowl, they went to church every day, the serious part of them laid aside publick amusements, the catechists prepared catechumens for baptism, the prelates preached on the subject, and the two following extracts from the discourses of Basil, archbishop of Cæsarea, may serve to shew both how and whom they

(4) Gesta Dei per Franeos: sive oriental. expedit. hist. Tom. i. Hanovie 1611, Præfat.

(5) Assemani Bibliot. Orient. Tom. iii. Part ii. p. 847. De Diaconissis. (6) Ibid.

(7) Ivenini. Dissert. apud Asseman. Post annum Christi millesimum non speciali alicujus concilii decreto, sed sensim sine sensu evanuisse, &c. (8) Asseman, ut. sup.

(9) Ibid. Durant tamen diaconissarum officium in ecclesia Syriaca diutius, quam in Græca.

(1) Josephi Indorum Metropolitan. pontifical. Nestorianor. an. Christ. 1559. ut sup.

(2) Dr. Rees's Cyclopædia on the word Deaconess.

(3) Goar. Eucholog. sive rituale Græcorum. Paris. 1647. Theoph. Hiero-Tzanphurnar. Menologia. Venetiis. 1639.

+

baptized in the Greek established church in the fourth century (4).

"It is necessary to the perfection of a christian life, that we should imitate Christ, not only such holy actions and dispositions, as lenity, modesty, and patience, which he exemplified in his life, but also his death, as Paul saith, I am a follower of Christ, I am conformable to his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. How can we be placed in a condition of likeness to his death? By being buried with him in baptism. What is the form of this burial, and what benefits flow from an imitation of it? First, the course of former life is stopped. No man can do this, unless he be born again, as the Lord hath said. Regeneration, as the word itself imports, is the beginning of a new life; therefore he that begins a new life must put an end to his former life. Such a person resembles a man got to the end of a race, who, before he sets off again, turns about, pauses, and rests a little so in a change of life it seems necessary that a sort of death should intervene, putting a period to the past, and giving a beginning to the future. How are we to go down with him into the grave? By imitating the burial of Christ in baptism; for the bodies of the baptized are in a sense buried in water. For this reason the apostle speaks figuratively of baptism, as a laying aside the works of the flesh: ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, which in a manner cleanses

(4) Chrysost. op. Edit. de Montsaucon. Tom. ii. p. 445. Tom. i. p. 611. Tom. ii. p. 42, 77. Tom. iv. p. 8, 39. Tom. ii. p. 224, &c. Catacheses ad illuminandos. Tom. xiii. Synopsis eorum, quæ in operibus Chrystomi observantur. Diatrib. i. Baptismi ritum ita describit Chrysostomus: qui baptizandi erant per dies triginta ad sanctum illud lavacrum apparabantur : antequam tingerentur hæc verba proferebant : Abrenuncio tibi Satana, et pompæ tuæ et cultui tuo, et conjungor tibi, Christe, illis vero addere jubebantur, Credo in resurrectionem mortuorum. Posteaque ter in unda mergebantur.

TRANSLATION.

The works of Chrysostom edited by Montfaucon. Vol. ii. p. 445, &c. Catechetical instructions for those who are about to be illuminated. Vol. xiii. Synopsis of those things which appear in the works of Chrysostom. The baptismal rite is thus described by this Father: The candidates for baptism spent thirty days in preparing for that sacred bath: before they were baptized they made the following confession: I renounce thee, Satan, and thy pomp and thy worship, and am joined to thee, O Christ: to which they were ordered to subjoin, I believe in the resurrection of the dead. After which they were three times immersed in the flood. Editor.