non-essentials. To quote only his
treatise of the next year on the Babylonian Captivity: "I wish
that those to be baptised were entirety sunken in the water; not
that I think it necessary, but that of so perfect and complete a
thing, there should be also an equally complete and perfect
sign." [3] It was a form that was granted as permissible in
current Orders approved by the Roman Church, and was continued in
succeeding Orders.[4] Even when immersion was not used, the
copious application of the water was a prominent feature of the
ceremony. No one is better qualified to speak on this subject
than Prof. Rietschel, himself formerly a Wittenberger: "The form
of baptism at Wittenberg is manifest from the picture by L.
Cranach on the altar of the Wittenberg _Pfarrkirche_, in which
Melanchthon is administering baptism. At Melanchthon's left hand
lies the completely naked child over the foot. With his right
hand he is pouring water upon the child's head, from which the
water is copiously flowing." [5]

Nor should it be forgotten that the immersion which Luther had in
mind was not that of adults, almost unknown at the time, and as
he himself says, practically unknown for about a thousand
years,[6] but that of infants. In the immersion of infants, he
finds two things: first, the sinking of the child beneath the
water, and, then, its being raised out, the one signifying death
to sin and all its consequences, and the other, the new life into
which the child is introduced. Four years later Luther introduced
into the revised Order of Baptism which he prepared, the Collect
of ancient form, but which the most diligent search of liturgical
scholars has thus far been unable to discover in any of the
prayers of the Ancient or Mediaeval Church, expressing in
condensed form this thought. We quote the introduction, as freely
rendered by Cranmer in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI:
"Almighty and Everlasting God, Which, of Thy justice, didst
destroy by floods of water the whole world for sin, except eight
persons, whom of Thy mercy Thou didst save, the same time, in the
ark; and when Thou didst drown in the Red Sea wicked King Pharaoh
with all his army, yet, the same time, Thou didst lead Thy
people, the children of Israel, safely through the midst thereof;
whereby Thou didst figure the washing of Thy holy baptism, and by
the baptism of Thy well-beloved Son, Jesus Christ, didst sanctify
the flood of Jordan, and all other waters, to the