So for more than 180 years we were, as Methodists, bound to believe in infant baptism. And we were content to defend it with Wesley's arguments, borrowed from a long list of ancestors reading back at least to Martin Bucer and Ulrich Zwingli during the Reformation. Our forebears on the EUB side are not so well-known, nor are their practices so easily explained. Understanding them must take in the full sweep of the history of the Christian practice of baptism. The brief glimpse we can take here will be too limited, but perhaps it can show the major lines of the picture.
Infant baptism is a practice whose origin is simply lost in antiquity.
There is no indisputable evidence that it was an apostolic practice, but it was practiced in some areas, at least, in the early second Christian century. It was not universally practiced, though, until sometime after the middle of the third century. During the Reformation the issue simply exploded into controversy. Ulrich Zwingli was a Swiss Reformer who benefited from Luther's pioneering work and, thus free from some bondage, went beyond Luther into what he considered new freedom, freedom to follow the Scriptures alone. So they baptized believers, which was recognized by the state church as rebaptism-4heological heresy.