of Rome
anathematized [v.03 p.0366] them; Pope Nicholas, however (858-867), in the
_Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum_, allowed baptism to be valid _tantum in
nomine Christi_, as in the Acts. Basil, in his work _On the Holy Spirit_
just mentioned, condemns "baptism into the Lord alone" as insufficient.
Baptism "into the death of Christ" is often specified by the Armenian
fathers as that which alone was essential.

Ursinus, an African monk (in Gennad. _de Scr. Eccl._ xxvii.), Hilary (_de
Synodis_, lxxxv.), the synod of Nemours (A.D. 1284), also asserted that
baptism into the name of Christ alone was valid. The formula of Rome is, "I
baptize thee in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit." In the East,
"so-and-so, the servant of God, is baptized," &c. The Greeks add _Amen_
after each person, and conclude with the words, "Now and ever and to aeons
of aeons, amen."

We first find in Tertullian trine immersion explained from the triple
invocation, _Nam nec semel, sed ter, ad singula nomina in personas singulas
tinguimur_: "Not once, but thrice, for the several names, into the several
persons, are we dipped" (_adv. Prax._ xxvi.). And Jerome says: "We are
thrice plunged, that the one sacrament of the Trinity may be shown forth."
On the other hand, in numerous fathers of East and West, _e.g._ Leo of
Rome, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Theophylactus, Cyril of Jerusalem and
others, trine immersion was regarded as being symbolic of the three days'
entombment of Christ; and in the Armenian baptismal rubric this
interpretation is enjoined, as also in an epistle of Macarius of Jerusalem
addressed to the Armenians (_c._ 330). In Armenian writers this
interpretation is further associated with the idea of baptism into the
death of Christ.

Trine immersion then, as to the origin of which Basil confesses his
ignorance, must be older than either of the rival explanations. These are
clearly aetiological, and invented to explain an existing custom, which the
church had adopted from its pagan medium. For pagan lustrations were
normally threefold; thus Virgil writes (_Aen._ vi. 229): _Ter socios pura
circumtulit unda._ Ovid (_Met._ vii. 189 and _Fasti_, iv. 315), Persius
(ii. 16) and Horace (_Ep._ i. 1. 37) similarly speak of trine lustrations;
and on the last mentioned passage the scholiast Acro remarks: "He uses the
words _thrice purely_, because people in expiating their sins, plunge
themselves in thrice." Such examples of the ancient u