of Gandia. The clothes on the corpse were not disturbed, and thirty ducats were in a purse. The body bore nine wounds, one in the throat, the others in the head, body, and limbs. The face of the Signor present may have looked at the time less calmly handsome than was its wont. It was, says Guicciardini, comune proverbio, che il Papa non faceva mai quello che diceva, e il Valentino non diceva mai quello che faceva.' Cæsar may have been taciturn on this occasion, but, unless Alexander had known that the one son had murdered the other, inquiry would not have slept; and no ordinary murderer would have escaped the doom attaching to the assassin of a Pope's son.

I have now endeavoured to place before my readers a narrative, necessarily very brief, but yet, I hope, sufficiently comprehensive, of the leading events in the careers of the members of the Borgia triumvirate; and I have essayed to cite fairly the evidence for and against Lucrezia, and to state clearly the opposing views and opinions of assailants and of defendants. I am bound to admit that Herr Gregorovius does not, in my judgment, succeed in rebutting the contemporary and conclusive evidence against the fair devil.' He has certainly succeeded in obscuring facts beneath a coat of whitewash, cleverly applied; but it is the office of criticism to remove the covering, and to restore the original picture in all its truth of drawing and force of colouring. This I have hoped to do.

The infra-human is thought to be unnatural. And yet the Renaissance was a state of society in which the Borgias were possible -nay, were actual-which led the maddened Savonarola to his bitter death, which stirred Luther into most active life, which revolted humanity and ripened the Reformation. We have no Shakespeare, we have no help even from Carlyle, to assist us in solving that problem of Lucrezia's guilt or innocence which is a problem only in consequence of the higher morality of later and of better times. We are left to our own imaginative insight or constructive imagination, and these, I think, condemn her, and judge Lucrezia as she was judged by those who, living with her in her own day, knew alike the day, and knew her. The dark cloud which has rested so long upon her reputation, seems, at first sight, about to lift, when we begin to listen hopefully to Gregorovius; but, after further study and more mature consideration, the black cloud settles darkly down in even deeper duskiness. We give her up to dramatist and librettist. We feel that they can use her name and fame as a representative of charm and crime. At once so foul and fair, we know that Ferrara does not condone Rome; and that history contains no woman's name at once so famous and so infamous. We remain conscious that record, and that story, will brand for ever as a name of scorn that of the dark and fair, the lovely and yet desperately wicked LUCREZIA BORGIA.

H. SCHÜTZ WILSON.

BAPTISM.

Ir is here proposed, in sequence to two Essays contributed to this Review some time since, on the Eucharist and on Absolution, to add another on Baptism. The subject is one which is full of antiquarian interest, and it also suggests many instructive reflections on Christian theology and practice. It is intended to consider what was its original form in early times, and what is the inner meaning which has more or less survived all the changes through which it has passed, as well as the lessons suggested by those changes.

1

What, then, was Baptism in the Apostolic age? It coincided with the greatest religious change which the world had yet witnessed. Multitudes of men and women were seized with one common impulse, and abandoned, by the irresistible conviction of a day, an hour, a moment, their former habits, friends, associates, to be enrolled in a new society under the banner of a new faith. That new society was intended to be a society of 'brothers;' bound by ties closer than any earthly brotherhood-filled with life and energy such as fall to the lot of none but the most ardent enthusiasts, yet tempered by a moderation, a wisdom, and a holiness such as enthusiasts have rarely possessed. It was moreover a society, swayed by the presence of men whose words even now cause the heart to burn, and by the recent recollections of One, whom 'not seeing they loved with love unspeakable.' Into this society they passed by an act as natural as it was expressive. The plunge into the bath of purification, long known among the Jewish nation as the symbol of a change of life, was still retained as the pledge of entrance into this new and universal communion-retained under the sanction of Him, into whose name they were by that solemn rite baptised.' In that early age the scene of the transaction was either some deep wayside spring or well, as for the Ethiopian, or some rushing river, as the Jordan, or some vast reservoir, as at Jericho or Jerusalem, whither, as in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, the whole population resorted for swimming or washing. The water in those Eastern regions, so doubly significant of all that was pure and refreshing,

1 The substance of some of the paragraphs here, and in page 693, is taken from an Essay on the Gorham Controversy, published in Essays on Church and State, &c.

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closed over the heads of the converts, and they rose into the light of heaven, new and altered beings. It was natural that on such an act were lavished all the figures which language could furnish to express the mighty change: Regeneration,' Illumination,' Burial,' Resurrection,' A new creation,' Forgiveness of sins,' 'Salvation.' Well might the Apostle say, 'Baptism doth even now save us,' even had he left his statement in its unrestricted strength to express what in that age no one could misunderstand. But no less well was he led to add, as if with a prescience of coming evils, Not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God.' 2

Such was the Apostolic Baptism. We are able in detail to track its history through the next three centuries. The rite was, indeed, still in great measure what in its origin it had been almost universally, the great change from darkness to light, from evil to good; the 'second birth' of men from the corrupt society of the dying Roman Empire into the purifying and elevating influence of the living Christian Church. Nay, in some respects the deep moral responsibility of the act must have been impressed upon the converts by the severe, sometimes the life-long, preparation for the final pledge, even more than by the sudden and almost instantaneous transition which characterised the Baptism of the Apostolic age. But gradually the consciousness of this answer of the good conscience towards God' was lost in the stress laid with greater and greater emphasis on the 'putting away the filth of the flesh.' Let us conceive ourselves present at those extraordinary scenes, to which no existing ritual of any European Church offers any likeness.

There was, as a general rule, but one baptistery in each city, and such baptisteries were apart from the churches. There was but one time of the year when the rite was administered-namely, between Easter and Pentecost. There was but one personage who could administer it the presiding officer of the community, the Bishop. There was but one hour for the ceremony; it was midnight. The torches flared through the dark hall as the troops of converts flocked in. The baptistery consisted of an inner and an outer chamber. In the outer chamber stood the candidates for baptism, stripped to their shirts; and, turning to the west as the region of sunset, they

2 1 Pet. iii. 21.

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3 As a general rule, in the writings of the later Fathers, there is no doubt that the word which we translate Regeneration' is used exclusively for Baptism. But it is equally certain that in the earlier Fathers it is used for Repentance, or, as we should now say, Conversion. See Clem. Rom. i. 9. Justin. Dial. in Tryph. p. 231, Clemens Alex. (apud Eus. H. E. iii. 23), Strom. lib. ii. 8, 425, A.

B. D.

At Rome there was more than one.

5 In the most beautiful baptistery in the world, at Pisa, baptisms even in the Middle Ages only took place on the two days of the Nativity and the Decollation of John the Baptist, and the nobles stood in the galleries to witness the ceremony. See Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, i. pp. 160, 161.

stretched forth their hands through the dimly lit church, as in a defiant attitude towards the Evil Spirit of Darkness, and, speaking to him by name, said: 'I renounce thee, Satan, and all thy works, and all thy pomp, and all thy service.' Then they turned, like a regiment, facing right round to the east, and repeated, in a form more or less long, the belief in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, which has grown up into the Apostles' Creed in the West, and the Nicene Creed in the East. They then advanced into the inner chamber. Before them yawned the deep pool or reservoir, and standing by the deacon, or deaconess, as the case might be, to arrange that all should be done with decency, the whole troop undressed completely as if for a bath, and stood up, naked, before the Bishop, who put to each the questions, to which the answer was returned in a loud and distinct voice, as of those who knew what they had undertaken.

Both before and after the immersion their bare limbs were rubbed with oil from head to foot; they were then clothed in white gowns, and received, as token of the kindly feeling of their new brotherhood, the kiss of peace, and a taste of honey and milk; and they expressed their new faith by using for the first time the Lord's Prayer.

These are the outer forms of which, in the Western Churches, almost every particular is altered even in the most material points. Immersion has become the exception and not the rule. Adult baptism, as well as immersion, exists only amongst the Baptists. The dramatic action of the scene is lost. The anointing, like the bath, is reduced to a few drops of oil in the Roman Church, and in the Protestant churches has entirely disappeared. What once could only be administered by Bishops, is now administered by every clergyman, and throughout the Roman Church by laymen and even by women. What is proposed then to be asked is, first, what is the residue of the meaning of Baptism which has survived, and what we may learn from it, and from the changes through which it has passed. I. As the Lord's Supper was founded on the Paschal Feast, and on the parting social meal, so Baptism was founded on the Jewishwe may say the Oriental-custom, which, both in ancient and modern times, regards ablution, cleansing of the hands, the face, and the person, at once as a means of health and as a sign of purity. Here as elsewhere the Founder of Christianity chose rather to sanctify and elevate what already existed than to create and invent a new form for Himself. Baptism is the oldest ceremonial ordinance that Christianity possesses; it is the only one which is inherited from Judaism. It is thus interesting as the only ordinance of the Christian Church which equally belonged to the merciful Jesus and the austere John.

• Bingham, xi. ii. § 1, 2.

7 Ibid. xi. 9, § 3, 45; xii. 1, 4. Possibly after immersion the undressing and the anointing were partial.

Out of all the manifold religious practices of the ancient law-sacrifices, offerings, temple, tabernacle, scapegoat, sacred vestments, sacred trumpets-He chose this one alone; the most homely, the most universal, the most innocent of all. He might have chosen the peculiar Nazarite custom of the long tresses and the rigid abstinence by which Samson and Samuel and John had been dedicated to the service of the Lord. He did nothing of the sort. He might have continued the strange, painful, barbarous rite of circumcision. He, or at least His Apostles, rejected it altogether. He might have chosen some elaborate ceremonial like the initiation into the old Egyptian and Grecian mysteries. He chose instead what every one could understand. He took what, at least in Eastern and Southern countries, was the most delightful, the most ordinary, the most salutary, of social observances.

1. By choosing water and the use of the bath, He indicated one chief characteristic of the Christian religion. Whatever else the Christian was to be, Baptism —the use of water-showed that he was to be clean and pure, in body, soul, and spirit; clean even in body. Cleanliness is a duty which some of the monastic communities of Christendom have despised, and some have even treated as a crime. But such was not the mind of Him who chose the washing with water for the prime ordinance of His followers. Wash and be clean' was the prophet's admonition of old to the Syrian whom he sent to bathe in the river Jordan. It was the text of the one only sermon by which a well-known geologist of this country was known to his generation. Cleanliness next to godliness' was the maxim of the great religious prophet of England in the last century, John Wesley. Every time that we see the drops of water poured over the face in Baptism, they are signs to us of the cleanly habits which our Master prized when He founded the rite of Baptism, and when, by His own Baptism in the sweet soft stream of the rapid Jordan, He blessed the element of water for use as the best and choicest of God's natural gifts to man in his thirsty, weary, wayworn passage through the dust and heat of the world. But the cleanness of the body was in this ordinance meant to indicate yet more strongly the perfect cleanness, the unsullied purity of the soul; or, as the English Baptismal Service quaintly expresses it, the mystical washing away of sin-that is, the washing, cleansing process that effaces the dark spots of selfishness and passion in the human character, in which, by nature and by habit, they have been so deeply ingrained. Associate the idea of sin with the idea of dirt' was a homely maxim of Keble. It indicates also that

This is the meaning of the frequent reference to 'water' in St. John's writings. As in John vi. 54, the phrases eating' and 'drinking,' 'flesh and blood,' refer to the spiritual nourishment of which the Eucharist, never mentioned in the Fourth Gospel, was the outward expression, so in John iii. 5, the word 'water' refers to the moral purity symbolised by Baptism, which in like manner (as a universal institution) is never mentioned in that Gospel.