(b) The name “seal” (σφραγίς), which also came both from the mysteries[626] and from some forms of foreign cult, was used partly of those who had passed the tests and who were “consignati,” as Tertullian calls them,[627] partly of those who were actually sealed upon the forehead in sign of a new ownership.[628]
(c) The term μυστήριον is applied to baptism,[629] and with it comes a whole series of technical terms unknown to the Apostolic Church, but well known to the mysteries, and explicable only through ideas and usages peculiar to them. Thus we have words expressive either of the rite or act of initiation, like μύησις,[630] τελετή,[631] τελείωσις,[632] μυσταγωγία;[633] of the agent or minister, like μυσταγωγός;[634] of the subject, like μυσταγωγούμενος,[635] μεμυημένος, μυηθείς, or, with reference to the unbaptized, ἀμύητος.[636] In this terminology we can more easily trace the influence of the mysteries than of the New Testament.[637]
(ii.) The second point is the change of time, which involves a change of conception. (a) Instead of baptism being given immediately upon conversion, it came to be in all cases postponed by a long period of preparation, and in some cases deferred until the end of life.[638] (b) The Christians were separated into two classes, those who had and those who had not been baptized. Tertullian regards it as a mark of heretics that they have not this distinction: who among them is a catechumen, who a believer, is uncertain: they are no sooner hearers than they “join in the prayers;” and “their catechumens are perfect before they are fully instructed (edocti).”[639] And Basil gives the custom of the mysteries as a reason for the absence of the catechumens from the service.[640] (c) As if to show conclusively that the change was due to the influence of the mysteries, baptized persons were, as we have seen, distinguished from unbaptized by the very term which was in use for the similar distinction in regard to the mysteries—initiated and uninitiated, and the minister is μυσταγωγός, and the persons being baptized are μυσταγωγούμενοι. I dwell upon these broad features, and especially on the transference of names, because it is necessary to show that the relation of the mysteries to the sacrament was not merely a curious coincidence; and what I have said as to the change of name and the change of conception, might be largely supplemented by evidence of parallelism in the benefits which were conceived to attach to the one and the other. There are many slighter indications serving to supplement what has been already adduced.
(α) As those who were admitted to the inner sights of the mysteries had a formula or pass-word (σύμβολον or σύνθημα), so the catechumens had a formula which was only entrusted to them in the last days of their catechumenate—the baptismal formula itself and the Lord’s Prayer.[641] In the Western rites the traditio symboli occupies an important place in the whole ceremony. There was a special rite for it. It took place a week or ten days before the great office of Baptism on Easter-eve. Otherwise the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed were kept secret and kept so as mysteries; and to the present day the technical name for a creed is σύμβολον or pass-word.
(β) Sometimes the baptized received the communion at once after baptism, just as those who had been initiated at Eleusis proceeded at once—after a day’s fast—to drink of the mystic κυκεὼν and to eat of the sacred cakes.
(γ) The baptized were sometimes crowned with a garland, as the initiated wore a mystic crown at Eleusis. The usage was local, but lasted at Alexandria until modern times. It is mentioned by Vansleb.[642]
(δ) Just as the divinities watched the initiation from out of the blaze of light, so Chrysostom pictures Christian baptism in the blaze of Easter-eve;[643] and Cyril describes the white-robed band of the baptized approaching the doors of the church where the lights turned darkness into day.
(ε) Baptism was administered, not at any place or time, but only in the great churches, and only as a rule once a year—on Easter-eve, though Pentecost was also a recognized season. The primitive “See here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized?” passed into a ritual which at every turn recalls the ritual of the mysteries. I will abridge the account which is given of the practice at Rome so late as the ninth century.[644] Preparation went on through the greater part of Lent. The candidates were examined and tested: they fasted: they received the secret symbols, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. On Easter-eve, as the day declined towards afternoon, they assembled in the church of St. John Lateran. The rites of exorcism and renunciation were gone through in solemn form, and the rituals survive. The Pope and his priests come forth in their sacred vestments, with lights carried in front of them, which the Pope then blesses: there is a reading of lessons and a singing of psalms. And then, while they chant a litany, there is a procession to the great bath of baptism, and the water is blessed. The baptized come forth from the water, are signed with the cross, and are presented to the Pope one by one, who vests them in a white robe and signs their foreheads again with the cross. They are arranged in a great circle, and each of them carries a light. Then a vast array of lights is kindled; the blaze of them, says a Greek Father, makes night continuous with dawn. It is the beginning of a new life. The mass is celebrated—the mystic offering on the Cross is represented in figure; but for the newly baptized the chalice is filled, not with wine, but with milk and honey, that they may understand, says an old writer, that they have entered already upon the promised land. And there was one more symbolical rite in that early Easter sacrament, the mention of which is often suppressed—a lamb was offered on the altar—afterwards cakes in the shape of a lamb.[645] It was simply the ritual which we have seen already in the mysteries. The purified crowd at Eleusis saw a blaze of light, and in the light were represented in symbol life and death and resurrection.
2. Baptism had felt the spell of the Greek ritual: not less so had the Lord’s Supper. Its elements in the earliest times may be gathered altogether apart from the passages of the New Testament, upon which, however clearly we may feel, no sensible man will found an argument, and which, taken by themselves, possibly admit of more than one meaning.