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BAPTISTS

Volume 1 · 74 words · 1771 Edition

in church-history, the name by which the Anabaptists love to distinguish themselves. See Anabaptists.

BAFTISTERY, in ecclesiastical writers, a place in which the ceremony of baptism is performed. In the ancient church, it was one of the exedrae, or buildings, distinct from the church itself, and consisted of a porch or anti-room, where the persons to be baptized made their confession of faith; and an inner room where the ceremony of baptism was performed.