Probably—we are still following Holtzmann—he did this under the guidance of analogies which he found in the Mystery-religions of the period. The expressions which he uses at any rate remind us sometimes of the language which is associated with them. This, then, was the point from which the later transformation began. “It was, in fact, Paul who from an outlying, one might almost say a remote point of his system of thought, opened up for the early Catholic Church a road which it would, indeed, most probably have followed even without this precedent, which was given, as it were, merely incidentally and casually.” It is interesting to observe precisely what views are intended to be excluded by these guarded explanations. Holtzmann is concerned to emphasise the view that baptism and the Lord’s Supper have in the Apostle’s doctrine a rather subordinate importance, and that they are not real sacraments but quasi-sacramental acts. He deliberately avoids the plain issue, on which after all everything really depends, whether baptism and the Supper effect redemption or only represent it. But those who came after him were obliged to raise this question, and so far as they were willing to respect the documents were obliged to answer that the sacraments not only represent but effect redemption. Wernle remarks regretfully that the cultus-acts have in Paul a much greater importance than one would be inclined to expect, and that in certain passages he tolerates or even suggests “pagan” views. Weinel is obliged to admit that alongside of the religion of inwardness which he has discovered in the Apostle’s teaching, a sacramental religion, which is inherently opposed to it, from time to [pg 165] time appears. “Sometimes,” he writes, “it is faith that brings the Spirit, sometimes baptism, sometimes it is faith that unites with Christ, sometimes the Lord’s Supper.” Titius feels himself obliged to give up the symbolical interpretation of Romans vi., which for Holtzmann still forms a fixed datum, and admits that the atmosphere of this chapter is “supranaturalistic,” and that the baptism there referred to is a real baptism into the death of Christ and an equally real partaking in His resurrection. Feine, in _Jesus Christus and Paulus,_ insists that the sacramental character of the cultus-acts described by Paul should be universally acknowledged. Heitmüller, in his work on “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s Writings,”_(_130_)_ gives the old and the new view side by side, and shows that it is the latter which alone is justified by the documents. The mystical connexion which in baptism and the Lord’s Supper is set up between the believer and Christ is a “physico-hyperphysical one,” and has as its consequence that the believer shares _realiter_ in the death and resurrection of Christ.