Ellicott says: “Jewish ablutions arrived at a ceremonial purity in the Levitical sense, and had nothing in common with the figurative act which portrayed through immersion the complete disappearance of the old nature, and by the emerging again, the beginning of a totally new life.” Life of Christ, p. 110.
for thirteen centuries
It is proved that not only was immersion practiced for baptism by Christ and His Apostles, but that for many ages after nothing else was known as baptism: and that for thirteen hundred years it was the common and prevailing form over the whole Christian world, with only exceptional departures, hereafter to be noticed. And that though the Latin or Roman Church did finally adopt sprinkling, claiming the right to change ordinances, the Greek and all the Oriental churches retained dipping, as they do to this day.
Doctor Stackhouse says: “Several authors have shown and proved that this manner of immersion continued, as much as possible, to be used for thirteen hundred years after Christ.” Hist. Bible, B. 8, Ch. 1.
Bishop Bossuet says: “We are able to make it appear, by the acts of councils and by ancient rituals, that for thirteen hundred years baptism was thus administered [by immersion] throughout the whole church, as far as possible.” Cited, Stennet ad Russen, p. 176.
Hagenbach says: “From the thirteenth century sprinkling came into more general use in the West. The Greek Church, however, and the church of Milan still retained the practice of immersion.” Hist. Doct. Vol. II., p. 84, note 1.
Van Oosterzee says: “This sprinkling, which appears to have first come generally into use in the thirteenth century in place of the entire immersion of the body, in imitation of the previous baptism of the sick, has certainly the imperfection that the symbolical character of the act is expressed by it much less conspicuously than by complete immersion and burial under the water.” Christ. Dogmat., Vol. II., p. 749.
Coleman says: “The practice of immersion continued even until the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Indeed, it has never been formally abandoned.” Anc. Christ. Exemp., Ch. 19, Sec. 12.
To the same effect is the testimony of Doctors Brenner, Von Cölln, Winer, Augusti, Bingham, and others.
as to the greek church