The baptism was changed from _water_ to that of the Holy Ghost, undoubtedly in consequence of the ever-dominant idea of the Fathers to institute a reform, and make the Christians distinct from St. John’s Nazarenes, the Nabatheans and Ebionites, in order to make room for new dogmas. Not only do the Synoptics tell us that Jesus was baptizing the same as John, but John’s own disciples complained of it, though surely Jesus cannot be accused of following a purely Bacchic rite. The parenthesis in verse 2d of John iv., “... though Jesus himself baptized not,” is so clumsy as to show upon its face that it is an interpolation. Matthew makes John say that he that should come after him would not baptize them with water “but with _the Holy Ghost_ and fire.” Mark, Luke, and John corroborate these words. Water, fire, and spirit, or Holy Ghost, have all their origin in India, as we will show. Now there is one very strange peculiarity about this sentence. It is flatly denied in _Acts_ xix. 2-5. Apollos, a Jew of Alexandria, belonged to the sect of St. John’s disciples; he had been baptized, and instructed others in the doctrines of the Baptist. And yet when Paul, cleverly profiting by his absence at Corinth, finds certain disciples of Apollos’ at Ephesus, and asks them whether they received _the Holy Ghost_, he is naïvely answered, “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost!” “Unto what then were you baptized?” he inquires. “_Unto John’s baptism_,” they say. Then Paul is made to repeat the words attributed to John by the Synoptics; and these men “were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus,” exhibiting, moreover, at the same instant, the usual polyglot gift which accompanies the descent of the Holy Ghost. How then? St. John the Baptist, who is called the “precursor,” that “the prophecy might be fulfilled,” the great prophet and martyr, whose words ought to have had such an importance in the eyes of his disciples, announces the “Holy Ghost” to his listeners; causes crowds to assemble on the shores of the Jordan, where, at the great ceremony of Christ’s baptism, the promised “Holy Ghost” appears within the opened heavens, and the multitude hears the voice, and yet there are disciples of St. John who have “never so much as _heard_ whether there be any Holy Ghost!” Verily the disciples who wrote the _Codex Nazaræus_ were right. Only it is not Jesus himself, but those who came after him, and who concocted the _Bible_ to suit themselves, that “_perverted_ John’s doctrine, _changed_ the baptism of the Jordan, and perverted the sayings of justice.”