In a note on the foregoing question, Murdock, the most accurate translator of Dr. Mosheim's great work on church history, says: "This may be placed beyond all controversy by many passages from the fathers of this century. And as it will conduce much to an understanding of the theology of the ancients, which differed in many respects from ours, I will adduce a single passage from Cyprian. It is in his Epistle, No. 73, p. 131: 'It is manifest where and by whom the remission of sin conferred in baptism is administered. They who are presented to the rulers of the church, obtain by our prayers and imposition of hands the Holy Ghost.'"[F] [Footnote F: Mosheim's Church Hist., Vol. I, p. 189.] In another passage Cyprian writes: "Our practice is, that those who have been baptized into the Church should be presented, that by prayer and imposition of hands they may receive the Holy Ghost." While Augustine, in the fourth century, says: "We still do what the apostles did when they laid their hands on the Samaritans and called down the Holy Ghost upon them."[G] [Footnote G: Laying on hands was employed in the Church for other purposes than imparting the Holy Ghost. It was the manner of administering to the sick (Mark xvi: 18; Acts xxviii, 8); and also of conferring authority or priesthood on men (see Acts vi: 5, 6; viii: 17; xiii: 3); but as we here are only dealing with the ordinance as it relates to a means of imparting the Holy Ghost, I do not stop to discuss the other purposes for which it was employed.] In subsequent centuries, however, this part of the Gospel was lost, or neglected by some of the sects of Christendom, and when announced among them today, it is not unfrequently regarded as a new doctrine.[H] Yet it is not. We have seen that it was a doctrine practiced by the apostles and their immediate successors. Indeed it is named directly as one of the principles of the doctrine of Christ by Paul. The following is the passage: "Therefore not leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, _and of laying on of hands_ and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment."[I] And here it may be well to call attention to the fact, that it is written that "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God."[J] And since the religious world has very generally lost sight of this important doctrine of the laying on of hands for imparting the Holy Ghost, it is one evidence, among many others, that they have not God; for the absence of this part of the Gospel proves that they have not continued in the doctrine of Christ.