a_, _i.e._ by laying his rod (_vindicta_) on the
slave and claiming him as free (_vindicatio in libertatem_). Then the owner
also laid his rod on the slave, declaring his intention to enfranchise him,
and the _praetor_ by his _addictor_ confirmed the owner's declaration. The
third _manumission_ thus gave to the son and slave his freedom. It is
possible that this common ceremony of Roman law suggested the triple
_abrenunciatio_ of Satan. Like the legal ceremony, baptism freed the
believer from one (Satan) who, by the mere fact of the believer's birth,
had power of death over him. And as the legal manumission dissolved a son's
previous agnatic relationships, so, too, the person baptized gave up father
and mother, &c., and became one of a society of brethren the bond between
whom was not physical but spiritual. The idea of adoption in baptism as a
son and heir of God was almost certainly taken by Paul from Roman law.

The ceremony of turning to the west three times with renunciation of the
Evil One, then to the east, is exactly paralleled in a rite of purification
by water common among the Malays and described by Skeat in his book on
Malay magic. If the Malay rite is not derived through Mahommedanism from
Christianity, it is a remarkable example of how similar psychological
conditions can produce almost identical rites.

The idea of spiritual re-birth, so soon associated with baptism, was of
wide currency in ancient religions. It is met with in Philo of Alexandria
and was familiar to the Jews. Thus the proselyte is said in the Talmud to
resemble a child and must bathe in the name of God. The Jordan is declared
in 2 Kings v. 10 to be a cleansing medium, and Naaman's cure was held to
pre-figure Christian baptism. Jerome relates that the Jew who taught him
Hebrew communicated to him a teaching of the Rabbi Baraciba, that the inner
man who rises up in us at the fourteenth year after puberty (_i.e._ at 29)
is better than the man who is born from the mother's womb.

In a Paris papyrus edited by Albr. Dieterich (Leipzig, 1903) under the
title of _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, an ancient mystic describes his re-birth
in impressive language. In a prayer addressed to "First birth of my birth,
first beginning (_or_ principle) of my beginning, first spirit of the
spirit in me," he prays "to be restored to his deathless birth (_genesis_),
albeit he is let and hindered by his underlying nature, to the end that
according to the pressing need an