V. In like manner the lifting up out of baptism is quickly done, but the thing it signifies, the spiritual birth, the increase of grace and righteousness, though it begins indeed in baptism, lasts until death, nay, even until the Last Day. Only then will that be finished which the lifting up out of baptism signifies. Then shall we arise from death, from sins and from all evil, pure in body and in soul, and then shall we live forever. Then shall we be truly lifted up out of baptism and completely born, and we shall put on the true baptismal garment of immortal life in heaven. As though the sponsors when they lift the child up out of baptism,[2] were to say, "Lo, now thy sins are drowned; we receive thee in God's Name into an eternal life of innocence." For so will the angels at the Last Day raise up all Christians, all pious baptised men, and will there fulfil what baptism and the sponsors signify; as Christ says in Matthew xxiv, "He shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather unto Him His elect from the four places of the winds, and from the rising to the setting of the sun." [Matt 24:31] VI. Baptism was presaged of old in Noah's flood, when the whole world was drowned, save Noah with three sons and their wives, eight souls, who were kept in the ark. That the people of the world were drowned, signifies that in baptism sins are drowned; but that the eight in the ark, with beasts of every sort, were preserved, signifies that through baptism man is saved, as St. Peter explains, [1 Pet. 3:20 f.] Now baptism is by far a greater flood than was that of Noah. For that flood drowned men during no more than one year, but baptism drowns all sorts of men throughout the world, from the birth of Christ even till the Day of Judgment. Moreover, it is a flood of grace, as that was a flood of wrath, as is declared in Psalm xxviii, "God will make a continual new flood." [3] [Ps. 29:10] For without doubt many more people are baptised than were drowned in the flood. [Sidenote: The Continuance of Sin]