“Palatina, in his lives of the popes, and other authors, ascribes the institution of this holy water to Pope Alexander the First; who is said to have lived about the year of Christ 113; but it could not have been introduced so early, since, for some ages after, we find the primitive fathers speaking of it as a custom purely heathenish, and condemning it as impious, and detestable. Justin Martyr says that it was invented by demons, in imitation of the true baptism signified by the Prophets, that their votaries might also have their pretended purifications by water; and the Emperor Julian, out of spite to the Christians, used to order the victuals in the markets to be sprinkled with holy water, on purpose either to starve, or force them to eat what by their own principles they esteemed polluted. “Thus we see what contrary notions the Primitive and Romish Church have of this ceremony: the first condemns it as superstitious, abominable, and irreconcilable with Christianity; the latter adopts it as highly edifying and applicable to the improvement of Christian piety: the one looks upon it as the contrivance of the Devil to delude mankind; the other as the security of mankind against the delusions of the Devil. But what is still more ridiculous than even the ceremony itself, is to see their learned writers gravely reckoning up the several virtues and benefits, derived from the use of it, both to the soul and the body; and to crown all, producing a long roll of miracles, to attest the certainty of each virtue, which they ascribe to it. Why may we not, then, justly apply to the present people of Rome what was said by the Poet of its old inhabitants, for the use of this very ceremony? “‘Ah, easy Fools, to think that a whole Flood Of water e’er can purge the Stain of Blood!’ Ovid, _Fasti_, ii., 45.”[134] Mr. Middleton wrote as a polemist against Romanism, and hence he took especial pains to apply these facts to that system of Christianity exclusively. Such an application is manifestly unjust, since baptism was fully corrupted before the formal establishment of the Papacy, and many corrupt elements are yet retained in Protestantism. Mr. Middleton’s suggestion that men were debarred from the use of holy water as a punishment is sustained by the following from ÆSCHINES. In his speech against Ctesiphon he said: “Now the said law-giver (Solon) excludes as well the fearful, and him that refuses to serve in war, as him that deserts his rank in battle, from the privilege of holy lustration, and from the assembly of the people.”[135]