our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the
washing with water."

Other writers of the period under consideration, however, praise the
saving efficacy of baptism in the most exalted terms. According to
their minds, it is the actual means of the redemption of sins, not
a mere literal rite expressing ceremonially the work of God's Spirit
within the heart; it is an illumination; it extinguishes the fire
of sin; it removes the unclean spirits from men and seals them for
heaven. Tertullian wrote extensively on this subject. In his work
On Baptism, chapters 3 to 8, he maintains the doctrine of baptismal
regeneration "by which we are washed from the sins of our former
blindness and set free for eternal life." He declares that by this act
men are prepared to receive the Holy Ghost; that in the literal act,
"the spirit is corporeally washed in the waters, and the flesh is, in
the same, spiritually cleansed." Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (third
century), in his treatise concerning the Baptism of Heretics, teaches
the same doctrine in no uncertain terms.

[Sidenote: Other erroneous doctrines and practises]

The limits of this work preclude the historic treatment of the rise
and development of the host of false doctrines and practises that
finally bound the people in the thralldom of superstition and plunged
the world into the darkness of spiritual night. One who is free from
such influences can scarcely read without feelings of disgust the
elaborate treatises of these church fathers wherein they extol the
virtues of virginity as forming a new order of life, as an evidence of
divinity, as making virgins while in this world "equal to the angels
of God," and as a certain surety of special rewards in heaven. From