Tertullian, who lived at the end of the second and beginning of the third century, wrote a short treatise on this sacrament. This treatise he begins by bringing together all that Holy Scripture contains about water, with such minuteness of detail that he is presently obliged to check himself, saying that, if he were to pursue the subject through all Holy Scripture with the same fulness with which he had begun, men would say he was writing a treatise in praise of water rather than of baptism. From the first chapter of the Book of Genesis to the last of the Evangelists, and even of the Apocalypse, he finds continual testimony to the high dignity and sacramental life-giving power of this element. The Spirit of God, he says, moved over it at the first; whilst as yet the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the heaven was as yet unformed, water alone, already pure, simple, and perfect, supplied a worthy resting-place on which God could be borne. The division of the waters was the regulating power by which the world was constituted; and when at length the world was set in order, ready to receive inhabitants, the waters were the first to hear and obey the command and to bring forth creatures having life. Then, again, man was not made out of the dry earth, but out of slime, after a spring had risen out of the earth, watering all its surface. All this is out of the first two chapters of Genesis; and here he makes a pause, breaking into that apology which has been already mentioned. Then he resumes the thread of his discourse, but passing much more briefly over the remainder of the Old Testament. He notes how the wickedness of the old world was purged by the waters of the Deluge, which was the world’s baptism; how the waters of the Red Sea drowned the enemies of God’s people and delivered them from a cruel bondage; and how the children of Israel were refreshed during their wanderings through the wilderness by the water which flowed continuously from the rock which followed them, “which rock was Christ.” Then he comes to the New Testament, and briefly but eloquently exclaims: Nowhere is Christ found without water. He is himself baptized with it; he inaugurates in it the first manifestation of his divine power at the wedding-feast in Cana; when he preaches the Gospel, on the last and great day of the feast, he stands and cries, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” He sums up his whole gift to man under the image of a fountain of water, telling the Samaritan woman that he has living water to give, which shall become in him that receives it a fountain of water springing up unto life everlasting. When he gives instruction upon charity, he instances a cup of cold water given to a disciple; he sits down weary at a well and asks for water to refresh himself; he walks on the waves of the sea, and washes his disciples’ feet; finally (Tertullian concludes), “this