Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“Dr. Sears’ inference from their alleged failure to magnify the significance of
immersion, and from their apparent agreement with the reformers as to the
mode, falls to the ground when we learn from an authority like Hofing, that at
that time immersion was as common as sprinkling, that the Roman ritual,
Luther’s books on baptism, and almost all the Lutheran rituals instruct the
administrator to immerse the candidate and that the word sprinkle is hardly
ever to be found in the earlier regulations. It is well known that the church of
England put immersion first, and allowed sprinkling only in case of the
feeble. Logically, therefore, it might be admitted that the Anabaptists did not
differ from the prevalent mode of baptism and still the presumption would be
that they immersed. … Gastins was wont to say, with ghastly sarcasm, as he
ordered the Anabaptists to be drowned: ‘They like immersion so much let us
immerse them,’ and his words became a proverb. Zwingli used to call them
‘bath fellows.’ Hubmeyer destroyed the font as well as the altar at Waldshut,
denouncing them both as nests of evil. … He says, ‘the soul must be sprinkled
with the blood of Christ and the body be washed through pure water.’ The
subjoined tract of this scholar and martyr is unmistakable on this point.
Bullinger admits all the spiritual significance of immersion, in his controversy
with the Anabaptists. Finally, the English Baptists practiced immersion and
the first of them came from the continent.” From a form for baptizing in
water, Niclolsburg, 1527, Dr. Everts, quotes: “Do you upon this faith and duty
desire to be baptized in water.”
Says Dr. J.A. Smith, formerly Lecturer on Church History to the Baptist
Theological Seminary, in Chicago:
“Whether Menno Simon was or was not strictly a Baptist, has been lately
called in question. Pertinent to the matter is a quotation from his writings,
Mennonis Simons Opera, p. 24, by a writer in the Nonconformist and
Independent. At the place noted, Simon Menno says: ‘After we have searched
ever so diligently, we shall find no other baptism besides dipping that is
acceptable to God and maintained in his word.’ We can from PERSONAL
KNOWLEDGE testify to the accuracy of this quotation.”
The writer goes on to say: “It is true that the followers in Holland departed
from the practice.” f473
Of Menno’s words — Doopsel in den water — Dr. Howard Osgood says:
“The words, indoopenege, onderdoopinege, onderdompelinge, are employed
in Dutch to express immersion. … Doop and doopen in Dutch exactly
correspond to taufe and taufen in German. All these words come from the
same root and etymologically signify dipping and dip.”
Dr. Osgood gives the following proofs that the Anabaptists immersed:
“Zwingli was all powerful in the council at Zurich and the council passed the
following decree, ‘Qui interum mergat, mergatur.’ Under the decree in 1527,
the first Anabaptist martyr in Switzerland, Felix Mantz, one of the first