Please note that most of these authors do NOT say the meaning of the word baptise is to immerse, but only state immersion is how baptism was practised in the early church. For those few who do comment on the word, and say its proper meaning is immerse, they are only referring to what we today would call the *denotation* of the word, because they then go on to speak of the *connotation* of the word in terms of washing, e.g. John Owen.

Immersionists generally misunderstand the state of the question in their controversy with sprinklers. Sprinklers do not undertake to prove that sprinkling was the mode in which people were baptised in the early church. They simply maintain that there is no mandate provided in the NT which requires immersion as the mode of baptism. It only needs to be shown that baptizein is used in the New Testament with the primary meaning of "to wash," in order to susbstantiate the sprinkler's claim that the application of water to the person being baptised is all that is necessary to constitute the act of baptism. "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit," John 13:10. As the person being baptised is already regarded as having been sanctified and cleansed "with the washing of water by the word," all that is required in the administration of the sacrament of baptism is the application of water to one part of the person's body as a sign of the inward grace. It is only on the false supposition that baptism itself effects something with respect to the person's salvation that the mode of baptism could become a matter of significance.

In the Lord's supper the *elements* of bread and wine with the sacramental *action* of eating and drinking are necessary for a valid administration of that ordinance. There is no inisistence that the people sit down to eat a whole meal, but a fragment of bread and a sip of wine suffices. Likewise the *element* of baptism is water, and the sacramental *action* is washing, and these suffice for a valid administration of the ordinance without having recourse to a bath.

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Yours sincerely,


"Illum oportet crescere me autem minui."