Definition of "baptism" []

• A religious sacrament marked by the symbolic application of water to the head or immersion of the body into water and resulting in admission of the recipient into the community of Christians. (noun)
• A ceremony, trial, or experience by which one is initiated, purified, or given a name. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Nor had I denied the divine appointment of baptism, but only declared my belief that _water baptism_, though a becoming rite under the Christian dispensation, was the baptism of John, and absolutely binding only under his intermediate dispensation."
• "Mr. Lloyd, however, was in as great a mistake; for when insisting that the rite of baptism by water was to cease, when the _spiritual_ administration of CHRIST began, he maintained, that John the Baptist said, '_My baptism_ shall decrease, but _his_ shall increase.'"
• "He did not approve of rebaptism, for he insisted that the all-important matter was not how or when water was applied, {81} but the reception of _Christ's real baptism_, an inner baptism, a baptism of spirit and power, by which the believing soul, the inner man, is clarified, strengthened, and made pure. ["