MySource:Quolla6/Schaff, Potter and Jackson, 1893:124,232-233

P124 The earliest assured case of theocratic censure on the ground of antipedobaptist error occurred December 14, 1642, at the Salem Quarterly Court. The record runs: " The Lady Deborah Moody, Mrs. King, and the wife of John Tilton were presented for holding that the baptizing of infants is no ordinance of God." Winthrop reports the matter more fully as regards the principal offender: " The Lady Moody, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church of Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch, against the advice of all her friends. Many others infected with anabaptism removed thither also. She was after excommunicated." Winthrop does not inform us what Lady Moody's friends advised her to do under the circumstances, but as they would scarcely have advised her to face the determined opposition of the authorities, which would have resulted in formal banishment, with death as the penalty of returning, they must have advised her to abandon her views or at least any aggressive assertion of them.

p. 232-233 In 1643 Lady Moody, who had adopted antipedobap- tist views, left Massachusetts, with a number of her friends and dependents, for Long Island. On her way she spent some time in New Haven, where she is said to have made several converts to her views, among them Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the first governor of the New Haven colony, and the daughter of an English bishop. Mrs. Eaton gave much trouble to Pastor John Davenport, who labored earnestly to convince her that " baptism" has come in the place of circumcision, and is to be administered unto infants." Lady Moody took a patent of land from Governor Kieft at Gravesend, with the guaranty of " the free liberty of conscience according to the custom of Holland, without molestation or disturbance from any magistrate or magistrates, or any other ecclesiastical minister that may pretend jurisdiction over them." A number of other antipedobap- tists from New England and elsewhere gathered themselves around Lady Moody, but they do not seem at this time to have formed themselves into a church. Francis Doughty, an English antipedobaptist, having incurred persecution at Lynn and Taunton, Mass., for denying infant baptism, was the first religious teacher in Flushing. After laboring for a short period he left for Virginia in 1656. A paper on " The State of Religion " in the New Netherlands, drawn up by two Reformed clergymen (Megapolensis and Drissius) in August, 1657, and addressed to the classis of Amsterdam, gives a number of interesting facts with reference to Long Island at this time, which partly confirm and partly contradict some of the data derived from other sources. Mennonites are mentioned as being at Gravesend, who " reject infant baptism, the Sabbath, the office of preacher, and the teachers of God's word, saying that through these have come all sorts of contention into the world. Whenever they come together the one or the other reads something for them." These so-called Mennonites were probably identical with Lady Moody and her followers, and these peculiarities may account for the failure of these antipedobaptists to organize a regular Baptist church. The notice about Flushing is highly interesting: " At Flushing they have had a Presbyterian preacher who conformed to our Church, but many of them became endowed with divers opinions. . . . They absented themselves from preaching, nor would they pay the preacher his promised stipend. The said preacher was obliged to leave and repair to the English Virginias." This preacher can scarcely be other than Francis Doughty, whose anti- pedobaptist views seem abundantly attested.