Question:
Please inform me at what time or what the earliest practical date of baptism has been known among Christians since the days of Christ and His apostles. Also, I would like to know by whom baptism was first practiced among those of the Protestant faith.
Answer:
We do not question the statement frequently made that believers in Christ have practiced it from that day till the present. Like the Sabbath, it was perverted by the rapidly apostatizing church. In the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia article “Baptism,” it is said that “there is not a dissenting voice in all the literature of the Christian church for twelve hundred years” and that “immersion was the act of baptism.” “Historians, and those who treat of the early liturgies, unite in the same testimony.” “The Oriental churches, Greek, Russian, Armenian, Coptic, and others, have always practiced immersion, and allow nothing else for baptism.” “The Western churches also preserved the baptism of the New Testament for thirteen hundred years, and then gradually introduced pouring or sprinkling.” “Luther sought, against the tendency of the times, to restore immersion.” “Calvin was the first to assert that immersion was of no importance,” and he is thus quoted: “Whether the person who is baptized be wholly immersed, and whether thrice or once, or whether water be only poured or sprinkled upon him, is of no importance; churches ought to be left at liberty in this respect to act according to the difference of countries. The very word ‘baptize,’ however, signifies to immerse; and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient church.” – lnstitutes, book 4, chapter 15, section 19.
Even in the Catholic Church, “the Council of Ravenna (1311) was the first to allow a choice between sprinkling and immersion.”
The Baptists, who revived the proper mode, appeared first in Switzerland in 1523. They were found in 1525-1530 with large, fully organized churches in Southern Germany, Tyrol, and Middle Germany. “In all these places,” persecution made their lives bitter.” From these and other facts it is most probable that they existed long prior to these dates, and were composed in most cases of the descendants of those who refused to depart in the fourteenth century from Bible baptism.”
