Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare

“ In the early church water was not expressly consecrated for baptisms and other lustrations. “Water,” says Tertullian in his tract on baptism, “was the abode at the first of the divine Spirit, being more acceptable then (to God) than the other elements.” He pictures the world in the beginning: “total darkness, formless as yet, without tending of stars, the melancholy abyss, the earth unprepared, the heaven undevelopt. The liquid alone an ever perfect material, smiling, simple, pure in its own right, as a worthy vehicle underlay the God.” ”

“ In the Roman order of baptism the priest prays that “the font may receive the grace of the only begotten Son from the holy Spirit, and that the latter may impregnate with hidden admixture of His light this water prepared for the regeneration of mankind, to the end that man through a sanctification conceived from the immaculate womb of the divine font, may emerge a heavenly offspring reborn as a new creature.” The water is then exorcized and evil spirits warned off, and lastly blessed. During the prayer the priest twice signs the water with the cross, and once blows upon it. ”