Turning from the possibilities and probabilities suggested by the history of religion to the evidence of the early literature critically studied, two points stand out as probable. First, Jesus neither practised nor enjoined baptism of any kind; secondly, the Antiochean missionaries always practised baptism "in the name of the Lord Jesus." The second point is so obviously proved both by Acts and the Pauline epistles that it requires no discussion. The first has the limitations of the argument from silence, for it rests on the fact that there is no trace of Baptism by Jesus, either by practice or precept, in the synoptic gospels, except a single statement in Matt. xxviii. 19, {86} in which the risen Jesus is represented as commanding the disciples to undertake the conversion of the Gentiles (_ta ethne_) and their baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That this verse is not historical but a late tradition, intended to support ecclesiastical practice, is shown by the absence of the trine formula of baptism in Acts and the Epistles, and the extreme reluctance with which the apostles, who are supposed to have received this revelation, undertook a mission to the Gentiles. We have to choose between the account in Matthew, which makes the mission to the Gentiles the result of the command of the risen Jesus in Galilee, or that in Acts, confirmed by Paul, which makes it begin much later from the preaching in Antioch of the scattered adherents of Stephen, and from revelations to Paul and Peter, on the road to Damascus, and at Joppa. There can be little doubt that Acts ought to be trusted on this point.