Note 72 — EPHRATA.
Reading edition
A writer in the Chronicle speaks of being at one of the count’s conferences, where there were Mennonites, Separatists, and Baptists. But when he came home, he told the vorsteher that he regarded the count’s conference as a snare to bring simple awakened souls again into infant-baptism and church-going. Then they held a council, and resolved to have a yearly conference of their own.
The above expression—infant-baptism and church-going—sounds so much like the account of the Baptist or Anabaptist persecutions narrated in the Martyr-book, that we might almost conclude that the Dunkers had a direct connection with the Anabaptists, instead of originating among the Pietists. But it will be remembered that the Ephrata Dunkers had printed an edition of the great Martyr-book, and it is most probable that some of them were familiar with it. Still, there may have been among the Pietists some who were or had been Baptists.