Now, here was the very word required to designate the Mosaic rites of purifying. Of dippings and immersions, Israel had none; and, if these had been found in their ritual, the verbs, _bapto, to dip, and kataduo, to plunge into, to immerse_, and the nouns, _baphē_ and _katadusis_,—_a dipping, an immersion_, were at hand and specific in meaning. But they did want words to express that potency by which the unclean were, in the words of Dr. Conant, introduced into “a new state of life,”—a state of ritual cleanness, typical of the spiritual newness of life in Christ Jesus which God’s people receive, by the baptism of the Spirit. To express the working of that change, they appropriated the word _baptizo, to baptize_; that is, to cleanse, to purify. Then, to give name to the rites by which that change was accomplished, they formed from it the two sacred words, _baptisma_ and _baptismos_, words wholly unknown to classic Greek literature. They are, as to etymology and meaning identical. By grammarians, the termination, _mos_, is said generally to indicate the act signified by the verb, while _ma_ indicates its effect. But the rule is neither absolute nor universal; and the sacred writers do not maintain the distinction. By them _baptisma_ is used alike to signify the act of baptizing, and the effect, the new state produced by it. In their writings, the distinction seems to consist in the employment of _baptismos_ generically, as designating divers kinds of purifying rites; while _baptisma_ is specifically applied to the baptism of John and of Christ. It is found in no other writings of that or preceding ages. Outside the Scriptures, _baptismos_ occurs once, in the works of Josephus, who thus designates John’s baptism.[30] Footnote 30: “Antiquities of the Jews,” XVIII, vi, 2. SECTION XXXVIII.—_The Baptism of Naaman._ In the Septuagint or Greek Scriptures, _baptizo_ first appears in the account of the healing of Naaman. “Elisha sent a messenger unto him saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.... Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan according to the saying of the man of God.”—2 Kings v, 10, 14. It is asserted that here is clearly an immersion.—“He went down and _dipped_ himself seven times.” Respecting the question thus raised, it is, in the first place, to be distinctly noticed, that the decision, whatever it be, can not in any way neutralize or diminish the force of the argument already developed from the divers baptisms of the epistle to the Hebrews. Were we to allow that Naaman was immersed, that fact would constitute no reply to the demonstration that no immersions were “imposed on Israel,” although divers baptisms were imposed. But, that there was no immersion in this case, will appear in what follows.