Cyril lived in the next century. He was bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 412-444. In his exposition of Isaiah iv, 4, he says, “We have been baptized, not with bare water, nor with the ashes of a heifer,—We are sprinkled [with these] to purify the flesh, alone, as says the blessed Paul,—but with the Holy Spirit, and fire.” Thus, from the translation of the Old Testament into Greek down through the time of Christ and the apostles, and to the middle of the fifth century, the Levitical sprinklings were known and designated as baptisms. Further we need not trace them. PART VI. STATE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT. SECTION XLV.—_Points established by the foregoing Evidence._ A review of the preceding pages will discover the following points to have been established. 1. Baptism was a rite familiar among the Jews at the time of Christ’s coming, and not a new institution then first introduced. 2. Paul being witness, it was an ordinance imposed on Israel at Sinai, as part of the Levitical system. 3. There is no trace, in the Levitical law, of an ordinance for the immersion of the person, in any circumstances, or for any purpose whatever. 4. There is not, anywhere, in the Old Testament an allusion to immersion as a symbolic rite, nor a figure derived from it, although those Scriptures are full of allusions and figures referring to the symbolic import of the pouring and sprinkling of water. 5. There was an ordinance for the immersion of certain things very slightly defiled; which at once illustrates the ritual value of immersion as compared with sprinkling, and the plainness of the language where immersion was meant. 6. The baptisms, therefore, to which Paul refers as having been “imposed on” Israel, could not have been immersions, and the word, _baptizo_, did not in his vocabulary mean, to immerse. 7. The only institutions to which he can have referred are comprehended under the two heads of, administered rites, and self-performed washings. 8. The self-washings were not sacraments, or seals of the covenant, but monitory symbols of duty. 9. The gradation of these washings, the frequency and circumstances of their observance, and the limited facilities available, render it impossible that they can have been immersions. 10. Their symbolic significance, the words used to describe them, the customs as to ablutions, and the washings of the priests in the court of the sanctuary, and of the high priest in the holy place, concur to demonstrate that they were ablutions performed by affusion. 11. The administered rites were sacramental seals of the covenant. They were essentially one in meaning, office, and form; and were invariably performed with a hyssop bush, by an official administrator, sprinkling the recipient with living water, in which was the blood or ashes of sacrifice.