The voice of the classics is clearly against the rendering in question. The fact that the Greeks are entirely silent as to a washing by immersion, or any vessel for the purpose,—the distinct name of _loutēr_ given to the only vessel that contained water,—the bathing performed by pouring,—the use of _loutron_ to express such bathing, and to designate the water itself, where there was no vessel, and libations, in which there was water poured out, but no laver, nor bathing,—the primitive and peculiar employment of the word in the plural number,—and the derivatives formed from it, all inure to the one conclusion. At least, in classic Greek, _loutron_ does not mean, a _laver_, but _water_ for washing, and the _washing_ accomplished by it; and that, with intimate reference to its affusion on the person. Nor does the Hellenistic Greek utter a different testimony. In the Song of Songs, it is said,—“Thy teeth are like a flock, shorn, which came up _from the washing_ (_apo tou loutrou_).” So reads the Septuagint. From Ecclesiasticus (above, p. 169) we have the proverb, “He that is baptized from the dead, and again toucheth the dead, what availeth his _washing_ (_loutrō_)?” Here, cleansing by the sprinkled water of separation is called _loutron_, a washing. So Philo (above, p. 175) describes the purifying rites, the _washings_ (_loutra_) and the sprinklings, of the Jews. Josephus says of the two springs of Machærus, near the Dead Sea, the one hot, and the other cold, that “when mingled together they make a most pleasant _bath_ (_loutron_).”[101] And Paul, himself, writes that Christ gave himself for the church, “that he might cleanse it, purifying it with _the washing_ (_tō loutrō_) of water.” Here the new version must either make nonsense of the passage, or do violence to the Greek. Either it must read, “purifying it _with_ the laver,” that is, with the bath tub, not the washing; or, “_in_ the laver,” a rendering forbidden by the instrumental dative (_tō loutrō_.) Footnote 101: Jewish War. VII, vi, 3. On the other hand, in more than a dozen places,—wherever the lavers of the tabernacle and the temple are mentioned, the Septuagint is _loutēr_,—the same word, in the same sense in which it was used by the Greeks to designate the containing vessel. In a word, neither in the classics, nor in Hellenistic Greek, is _loutron_ ever found in the sense of a laver, or bathing vessel. Or, if it is so used, the Lexicons ignore it; Stephanus, in his great Thesaurus, knows nothing of it; and the advocates of that rendering do not adduce it. And were such example found, it would be wholly insignificant as to the interpretation of Paul, in presence of all these facts.