the ancient custom.
The sacrament of baptism (even when it was administered to infants) was
immediately followed by confirmation and the holy communion.]

[Footnote 68: The Fathers, who censured this criminal delay, could not
deny the certain and victorious efficacy even of a death-bed baptism.
The ingenious rhetoric of Chrysostom could find only three arguments
against these prudent Christians. 1. That we should love and pursue
virtue for her own sake, and not merely for the reward. 2. That we
may be surprised by death without an opportunity of baptism. 3. That
although we shall be placed in heaven, we shall only twinkle like little
stars, when compared to the suns of righteousness who have run their
appointed course with labor, with success, and with glory. Chrysos tom
in Epist. ad Hebraeos, Homil. xiii. apud Chardon, Hist. des Sacremens,
tom. i. p. 49. I believe that this delay of baptism, though attended
with the most pernicious consequences, was never condemned by any
general or provincial council, or by any public act or declaration of
the church. The zeal of the bishops was easily kindled on much slighter
occasion. * Note: This passage of Chrysostom, though not in his more
forcible manner, is not quite fairly represented. He is stronger in
other places, in Act. Hom. xxiii.--and Hom. i. Compare, likewise, the
sermon of Gregory of Nysea on this subject, and Gregory Nazianzen. After
all, to those who believed in the efficacy of baptism, what argument
could be more conclusive, than the danger of dying without it? Orat.
xl.--M.]

[Footnote 69: Zosimus, l. ii. p. 104. For this disingenuous falsehood
he has deserved and experienced the harshest treatment from all the
ecclesiastical writers, except Cardinal Baronius, (A. D. 324, No.
15-28,) who had occasion to employ the infidel on a particular service
against the Arian Eusebius. Note: Heyne, in a valuable note on this
passage of Zosimus, has shown decisively that this malicious way of
accounting for the conversion of Constantine was not an invention of
Zosimus. It appears to have been the current calumny eagerly adopted and
propagated by the exasperated Pagan party. Reitemeter, a later editor
of Zosimus, whose notes are retained in the recent edition, in the
collection of the Byzantine historians, has a disquisition on the
passage, as candid, but not more conclusive than some which have
preceded him--M.]

[Footnote 70: Eusebius, l. iv. c. 61, 62, 63. The bishop of C