In the succeeding chapters Tertullian goes on to show that water was “chosen as a vehicle of divine operation” because it was the element over which the divine spirit brooded in creation. He says:
“_Why should WATER be chosen as a vehicle of divine operation? Its prominence first of all in Creation_.--Mindful of this declaration as of a conclusive prescript, we nevertheless [proceed to] treat [the question], ‘How _foolish_ and _impossible_ it is to be formed anew by water. In what respect, pray, has this material substance merited an office of so high dignity?’ The authority, I suppose, of the liquid element has to be examined. This, however, is found in abundance, and that from the very beginning. For [water] is one of those things, which, before all the furnishing of the world, were quiescent with God in a yet unshapen state. In the first beginning, saith [Scripture], ‘God made the heaven and the earth. But the earth was invisible, and unorganized, and darkness was over the abyss; and the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the waters.’ The first thing, oh man, which you have to venerate, is the _age_ of the waters, in that their substance is ancient; the second, their _dignity_, in that they were the seat of the Divine Spirit, more pleasing [to him], no doubt, than all the other then existing elements. For the darkness was total thus far, shapeless, without the ornament of stars; and the abyss gloomy; and the earth unfurnished; and the heaven unwrought; water alone--always a perfect, gladsome, simple material substance, pure in itself--supplied a worthy vehicle to God. What [of the fact] that waters were in some way the regulating powers by which the disposition of the world thenceforward was constituted by God? For the suspension of the celestial firmament in the midst He caused by ‘dividing the waters’; the suspension of ‘the dry land,’ He accomplished by ‘separating the waters.’ After the world had been hereupon set in order through [its] elements, when inhabitants were given it, ‘the waters’ were the first to receive the precept, ‘to bring forth living creatures.’ Water was the first to produce that which had life, that it might be no wonder in baptism if waters know how to give life. For was not the work of fashioning man himself also achieved with the aid of waters? Suitable material is found in the _earth_, yet not apt for the purpose unless it be moist and juicy; which [earth] ‘the waters’ separated the fourth day before into their own place, temper with their remaining moisture to a clayey consistency. If, from that time onward, I go forward in recounting universally, or at more length [than I have already done] the evidences of the ‘authority’ of this element which I can adduce to show how great is its power or its grace; how many ingenious devices, how many functions, how useful an instrumentality, it affords the world, I fear I may seem to have collected rather the praises of water than the reasons of baptism; although I should [thereby] teach all the more fully, that it is not to be doubted that God has made the material substance which he has disposed throughout all his products and works, obey him also in his own peculiar sacraments; that [the material substance] which governs terrestrial life acts as agent likewise in the celestial.”