"Miss Dorothy," said Mr. Sterling, "the idea seems preposterous to me that the Baptists existed before the Reformation."
"Here is a statement that I read in 'Mosheim's History of Antiquity', in which he says 'the origin of the Baptists is lost in the depths of antiquity'."
"Does Mosheim say that?" asked Mr. Sterling. "Why, he was a noted writer."
"I found that three or four hundred years ago the Baptists were called Anabaptists, and that they gradually dropped the first part of their name."
"What does the word Anabaptist mean?"
"It means a rebaptizer. It seems that they insisted when a person who had been baptized in infancy was converted in later life that he should be baptized on profession of faith. They claimed that his infant baptism was not Bible baptism, and so the people called them rebaptizers or Anabaptists. And here is one statement that I read: 'It is said that two of the presidents of Harvard College were Anabaptists'."
"What is that!" exclaimed the father, almost bouncing out of his chair. "Two of Harvard's presidents Baptists? Where did you find that statement?"
"On page 338 of Gregory's 'Puritanism in the Old World and the New'."
"And you say the Baptists and the Anabaptists are the same?"
"Yes, indeed. I find that the names are used interchangeably in the histories, and gradually the shorter name took the place of the longer."