ngeri ...
veniant ergo parvuli, dum adolescunt; veniant dum discunt, dum quo
veniant docentur; fiant Christiani, cum Christum nosse potuerint. Quid
festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum? Cautius agetur in
saecularibus, ut cui substantia terrena non creditur, divina credatur ...
Si qui pondus intelligant baptismi, magis timebunt consecutionem quam
dilationem."]

[Footnote 291: Under such circumstances the recollection of the
significance of baptism in the establishment of the Church fell more and
more into the background (see Hermas: "the Church rests like the world
upon water;" Irenaeus III. 17. 2: "Sicut de arido tritico massa una non
fieri potest sine humore neque unus panis, ita nec nos multi unum fieri
in Christo Iesu poteramus sine aqua quae de coelo est. Et sicut aricla
terra, si non percipiat humorem, non fructificat: sic et nos lignum
aridum exsistentes primum, nunquam fructificaremus vitam sine superna
voluntaria pluvia. Corpora unim nostra per lavacrum illam quae est ad
incorruptionem unitatem acceperunt, animae autem per spiritum"). The
unbaptised (catechumens) also belong to the Church, when they commit
themselves to her guidance and prayers. Accordingly baptism ceased more
and more to be regarded as an act of initiation, and only recovered this
character in the course of the succeeding centuries. In this connection
the 7th (spurious) canon of Constantinople (381) is instructive: [Greek:
kai ten proten hemeran poioumen autous Christianous, ten de deuteran
katechoumenous, eita ten triten exorkizomen autous k.t.l.]]

[Footnote 292: Doellinger, Die Lehre von der Eucharistie in dem ersten 3
Jahrhunderten, 1826. Engelhardt in the Zeitschrift fur die hist.
Theologie, 1842, I. Kahnis, Lehre vom Abendmahl, 1851. Ruckert, Das
Abendmahl, sein Wesen und seine Geschichte, 1856. Leimbach, Beitrage zur
Abendmahlslehre Tertullian's, 1874. Steitz, Die Abendmahlslehre der
griechischen Kirche, in the Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie,
1864-1868; cf. also the works of Probst. Whilst Eucharist and love feast
had already been separated from the middle of the 2nd century in the
West, they were still united in Alexandria in Clement's time; see Bigg,
l.c., p. 103.]

[Footnote 293: The collocation of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which,
as the early Christian monuments prove, was a very familiar practice
(Tert. adv. Marc. IV. 34: "sacramentum baptismi et eucharistiae;"
Hippol., can. arab. 38: "baptizatus et corpore C