8. The Testament gives a lengthy form for this last pre-baptismal exorcism. Popular belief in the life-giving power of breath (Genesis 2. 7, etc.) was very widespread; compare 36. 11. Mark 7. 34 may have been specially in mind.[200] The “seal” was the sign of the cross. Compare chapter 37. 9. No further opportunity was given to contract defilement. 10. This direction, misunderstood in the Arabic and Ethiopic, is explained by 23. 1-2. Those about to be baptized brought with them as their first Christian “offering” the bread, wine, milk and honey needed for the baptismal eucharist. The Testament reduces this offering to one loaf from each of them. The rule should not be explained from chapter 32, which is not by Hippolytus. 21 THE BAPTISMAL CEREMONY 1. Hippolytus gives no form for the blessing of the water, but the Constitutions (VII, 43) direct an elaborate thanksgiving, concluding with the words “Sanctify this water and give it grace and power”, etc. Clement of Alexandria (_Pedagogue_ I, vi (50, 4)) appears to presuppose a petition for the descent of the Logos into the font. 2. The superior sanctity of “living” water is a common belief, and the Testament and the Canons allow no other for baptism. Compare Didache 7. 1. 3. Every non-Jew in the Graeco-Roman world was so accustomed to the public baths that the baptismal usage would not suggest the slightest impropriety. 5. To Hippolytus the ornaments as “alien” carry contagion. The Jews have a similar prohibition for women bathing after ceremonial impurity, but the reason given is that complete contact with the water is prevented. 6. The first mention of anointing in connection with baptism is in Tertullian, _On Baptism_ 7 (_ca._ 205). He explains the practice as derived from the Old Testament anointing of priests, and in view of 1 Peter 2. 9 and Revelation 1. 6; 5. 10[201] this may well express the original meaning of the ceremony. Or it may have been thought to convey the gift of the Spirit, as in 1 Samuel 16. 13, or may rest on more general conceptions of anointing as consecration, or may even be somehow connected with the title “Christ” (= “The Anointed One”). But, whatever the origin, unction after baptism is found practically everywhere in Christendom after the third century. In Hippolytus the blessing is still a thanksgiving and the oil is named accordingly. In the Constitutions (VII, 44) the formula is petitionary,[202] and the oil is called “mystical”. The common later title for this oil—to which other substances, such as balsam, are often added—is “chrism”. The Latin formula for blessing it still includes a solemn thanksgiving.