5. The many waters of Enon prove nothing to the purpose; since abundance of water was necessary to John’s congregations, had he made no ritual use of it whatever. 6. Equally futile is appeal to Paul’s “buried by the baptism,” as the imagined allusion is unnecessary to the interpretation, incongruous to the argument, and destructive of the distinctions which the apostle draws, and the conclusions which he deduces. 7. As to the remaining argument, from the baptism of the eunuch, we shall see hereafter, that while the facts recorded decide nothing, they create a presumption which distinctly indicates affusion. Thus, the rite in question,—foreign to the whole style of the Old Testament, its ritual and prophecies, and equally so to the language and doctrines of the New,—is left without a vestige of evidence, anywhere, whether as to mode or meaning, even in those particular words and passages which have been the reliance of its advocates. PART XIII. BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. SECTION LXXXI.—_The Doctrine is Contrary to the Whole Tenor of the Gospel._ Paul was yet in the meridian of his strength, and the most active period of his ministry, when he wrote to the Thessalonians that “the mystery of iniquity doth already work,”—the mystery out of which was to be developed “that Wicked, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.”—2 Thes. ii, 7, 8. There is nothing more remarkable, nor more humiliating, in the history of the church than the rapid defection from the simplicity of the gospel which is apparent in the early remains of patristic literature. The transition from the apostles and evangelists in the New Testament, to the writings of the fathers, is like that from the splendor of the noonday sun to the deepening twilight of the evening. It was the precursor of “the black and dark night,” by which the gospel was obscured for so many ages, and which still enshrouds the churches of Rome and the East in a mantle of gloom. Of this defection, the all-powerful cause was a false and mischievous interpretation of the Scriptures concerning the relation of the covenant of Sinai to the new covenant. They were interpreted as teaching that the visible church and its ordinances under the New Testament economy, was the antitype of the Levitical church and institutions,—that the rites and ceremonies of the latter were the shadow, of which the ordinances of the Christian church are the substance. Hence the Christian ministry became a priesthood, ministering better sacrifices and more effectual purifyings than those of the Mosaic ritual; for in their hands and by virtue of their consecrating prayers, the Lord’s supper became a propitiatory sacrifice of the very body and blood of the Lord Jesus, and baptism administered by them became a spiritual regeneration,—a purging of the