ed the child George, in honour of his present Majesty, when I was requested to say the Belief and the Lord's Prayer, and to make much the same promises as those required by our own church. The head priest afterwards laid hold of the boy, dipping his own hand into the water, and crossed him over the forehead, pronouncing at the same moment, "George, I baptise thee; in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." The whole company then knelt down, and joined in reciting the Lord's Prayer.
Here, as I was given to understand, the ordinary ceremony of baptism concludes; but as the boy had been a Musselmaun, he was, in addition, crossed with the consecrated oil over every joint and limb, or altogether, thirty-six times in different parts of his body. After this, he was wrapped in a clean white linen cloth,[1] and placed for a moment in my arms, the priests telling me, that "I must henceforth consider him verily as my son." The high priest did not take any active part in this ceremony, but the whole was conducted with great decorum, and a due degree of solemnity. The boy afterwards, according to the custom of most of the Eastern churches, was admitted to partake of the Holy Communion.[2] On our return from the church, the high priest accompanied us home, and continued with us nearly an hour. He paid me many compliments on what had passed, and declared, that "I had done an act which would for ever be recorded in their books; as the baptism of the boy most clearly proved, that the English were not "Franks" (alluding to the conduct of the Jesuits about baptism,) but that we adhered to the pure religion of the Apostles." After some conversation of this kind, in which he expressed the highest opinion of our doctrines, he ended by repeating nearly the same words which he had before
- ↑ This is a very ancient part of the ceremony, as appears from the testimony of many of the Fathers collected by Casalius—Puellus infans mutatione vestis sensu externo festum colit, quandoquidem interiori animi sensu nondum potest, &c. Vide De veteribus sacris Christianorum ritibus, auctore Johannis Bapt. Casalius Romanus. Francofurti, 1681.
- ↑ Ritum Eucharistiæ suscipiendæ post Baptismum non solum adultis, verum etiam infantibus fuisse communem. Vide the same author, p. 60.
