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Luther and the other reformers as the most expressive and primitive, though
not the only mode.” f468
That the Anabaptists were exclusive immersionists is evident.
(1.) From their making the Bible their only rule of faith and practice.
(2.) From their having inherited immersion from their Baptist ancestry.
(3.) From their having been persecuted AS DIPPERS.
“That some of these preferred and practiced immersion we infer from the fact
that their persecutors, who delighted in fitting the penalty, as they cruelly
judged it, to the fault, put many of them to death by full immersion, swathing
the sufferers to large sacks with their living contents into huge puncheons
where the victims were drowned. So the Swiss, some of them, at least,
immersed in rivers. This appears from the work Sabbata of Knertz, a
contemporary Lutheran.” f469
The translator of Luther’s Controversial Works, speaking of Luther’s sermon
on Baptism, f470 on p. 8, of his Introduction, says:
“The sermon and letters are directed principally against the Anabaptists, a
fanatical sect of reformers who contended that baptism should be
administered to adults only, not by sprinkling, but by dipping.”
A writer who has given this special investigation, says:
“And thus it is through the whole book of Luther on the sacraments. I have
read it over and over again, years ago, and marked all the places in
controversy concerning the Anabaptists, and in not one single instance is there
the remotest hint that they practiced sprinkling and pouring. … When the
Anabaptists spoke of the sprinkling of the Lutherans they called it ‘a handful
of water,’ doubtless in derision; and when they alluded to the dipping of
Luther, without faith either on the part of the administrator or the subject, they
called it ‘a dog bath,’ also in derision. Nothing satisfied them but the
immersion of a professed believer.”
Robinson says:
“Luther bore the Zwinglians dogmatizing, but he could not brook a
reformation in the hands of the dippers. … Notwithstanding all he had said in
favor of dipping, he persecuted them under the names of re-dippers, rebaptizers,
or Anabaptists.” f471
Dr. J.B. Thomas, Professor. of Church History in Newton Theological
Seminary: “Usually they insisted upon immersion as the only baptism.” f472
Dr. Featley published a work against them as “Dippers Dipped,” etc. Says Rev.
W.W. Everts, Jr.: