Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek and Latin
The people received John, who was lesser than Christ, weighing and considering whether perhaps he himself might be the Christ; but him who came “greater” than John, they did not receive. Do you want to know the reason? Learn this: John's baptism was visible, Christ's baptism was invisible. “For I,” he says, “baptize you in water; but he who comes after me,”
“is greater than I, he himself will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and” fire. When does Jesus baptize with the Holy Spirit, and again, when does he baptize with fire? Does he baptize with both the Spirit and fire at one and the same time, or at different and separate times? “But you,” he says, “will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many”
days from now. The apostles were baptized with the Holy Spirit after his ascension into the heavens; but that they were baptized with fire, Scripture does not record. But just as John, beside the river Jordan, waited for those coming to baptism, and drove others away, saying “brood of vipers” and the rest, while he received those who confessed their vices and sins, so will
the Lord Jesus Christ stand in the river of fire, beside the “flaming sword,” so that whoever, after departing this life, desires to pass over into paradise and is in need of purification, he may baptize him in this river and send him across to what he desires; but him who does not bear the mark of the earlier baptisms, he will not baptize with the washing of fire. For a person must first be baptized with “water and the Spirit,” so that,
when he comes to the river of fire, he may show that he has kept the washings of both water and the Spirit, and then he may deserve to receive also the baptism of fire in Christ Jesus: to whom is glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.