DUNKERS

or DIPPERS. A sect of Baptists, originating (1724) in the teaching of one Conrad Peysel or Bei el, a German, in Philadelphia, one of the American states. They are distinguished not only by their adherence to the rite of baptism with trine immersion, which, like other Baptists, they of course confine to adults, but also by their rigid abstinence from flesh, except on particular occasions; by their living in monastic societies, by their peculiar garb, like that of the Dominican friars, and by their scruples with regard to resistance, war, slavery, and litigation. Their great settlement is at a place which they call Euphrata, in allusion to the lament of the Hebrews in their captivity, which they used to pour forth to their harps as they sat on the banks of the Euphrates. EAGLE. A frequent, and the most beautiful, form of the lectern for reading the le ons from in churches. It has probably some reference to the eagle, which is the symbolical companion of St. John, in ecclesiastical design. The eagle is frequently employed in foreign churches, but generally for the chanting of the service, not for the le ons. Sometimes it is employed for the reading of the Epistles and Gospels, and there are instances of one being on each side of the choir or chancel. Several of the cathedrals and colleges in our universities have this kind of lecterns. Before the civil wars in 1651, there was in the cathedral of Water ford, a “great standing pelican to support the Bible, a brazen eagle,” and other ornaments.— Ryland’s Water ford. Winchester and St. John’s College, Cambridge, have of late years been provided with eagle lecterns. The “ Lectern a ” or Bible eagle at Peter borough was given by Abbot Ramsay and John Maldon in 1471.— Dugd. Monast. ed. 1830, i. 344.— Jebb.