Therefore more than one conscientious servant of the Church essayed to devise some means by which the saving water might be brought in contact with the child before it saw the light. Still this precautionary measure never became officially adopted. The efficacy of the baptismal water exceeds that of the pool Bethesda, which removed only bodily infirmities. Baptism saves millions of souls from hell. Foreseeing this the devil, filled with evil devices, had determined, already before the rise of Christianity, to debase and scorn this sacrament by making, in anticipation, a copy of it in the Mithras mysteries instituted by him, which insolently imitate in other respects the mysteries of the Church. In baptism other means, consecrated by the priest, co-operate with the water: viz., the oil, the spittle (which the priest after baptism lets fall upon the child, and the efficacy of which is derived from Mark vii. 33), the salt, the milk and the honey.[15] Besides, there are the sign of the cross and the conjuration, which drive the tempter out of the child and prepare room for the Holy Ghost. With these magic ceremonies the child is received into the Church and from thenceforth becomes a sharer in the protection which it gives against the evil. Baptismal, or holy water, when drunk by the sick and infirm, heals and strengthens; if sprinkled upon the fields promotes fertility, or given to the domestic animals, affords them protection against witchcraft. As baptism is the first saving and sanctifying sacrament offered to man, so the unction with holy oil which is administered to the dying, is the last. Between them the eucharist is a perennial source of power and sanctification,--the eucharist in which "Bread and wine, placed upon the altar, after performed consecration, are God's true flesh and blood, which flesh perceptibly to the senses (_sensualiter_) is touched by the hands of the priest and masticated by the teeth of the believer."[16] When the priest has pronounced the formula of transformation, he elevates the host,[17] now no longer bread but the body of Christ, the congregation kneels and the ringing of bells proclaims to the neighborhood that the greatest of all the works of magic is accomplished. Eaten by the faithful, the flesh of Christ enters into their own flesh and blood and wonderfully strengthens both soul and body.[18] Heretics in Arras who believed that righteousness was necessary to salvation and doubted the doctrine of transubstantiation, were converted as soon as Bishop Gerhard told them that, in the time of Gregory the Great, the consecrated bread had taken, before a doubting woman, the shape of Christ's bleeding finger. A pious hermit who began to be afflicted by the same doubt, regained his faith when at the Communion he saw an angel apply the knife to an infant Jesus, at the very moment the priest broke the bread. There is much in the legends and chronicles about Jews who having secretly procured the host,