4. To endeavor to spread these principles among my companions, and try to help my younger brothers.
5. To use every possible means to fulfill the command: “Keep Thyself Pure.”
[100] The women claimed the right to baptize their own sex. But the bishops and presbyters did not care to be released from the pleasant duty of baptizing the female converts. Waite.—Hist. of Christian Religion to A.D. 200, p. 23.
The Constitution of the Church of Alexandria, which is thought to have been established about the year 200, required the applicant for baptism to be divested of clothing, and after the ordinance had been administered, to be anointed with oil.—Ibid, p. 384-5.
The converts were first exorcised of the evil spirits that were supposed to inhabit them; then, after undressing and being baptized, they were anointed with oil.—Bunsen’s Christianity of Mankind, Vol. VII, p. 386-393; 3d Vol. Analecta.
Women were baptized quite naked in the presence of these men.—Philosophical Dictionary.
Some learned men have enacted that in primitive churches the persons to be baptized, of whatever age or sex, should be quite naked. Pike.—History of Crime in England. See Joseph Vicecomes.—De Ritibus Baptismi. Varrius.—Thesibus de Baptisme.
[101] Undisguised sensuality reached a point we can scarcely conceive. Women were sometimes brought naked upon the stage. By a curious association of ideas the theater was still intimately connected with religious observance. Rationalism in Europe, 2-288.
[102] Catharine, the first wife of Peter the Great, was received into the Greek Church by a rite nearly approaching the primitive customs of the Christian Church. New converts to that church are plunged three times naked in a river or into a large tub of cold water. Whatever is the conditions, age or sex of the convert, this indecent ceremony is never dispensed with. The effrontery of a pope (priests of the Greek Church are thus called), sets at defiance all the reasons which decency and modesty never cease to use against the absurdity and impudence of this shameful ceremony. Count Segur.—Woman’s Condition and Influence in Society.
CHAPTER FIVE