Dean Stanley[178] says: "It has been the misfortune of churches that
they have imagined a primitive condition which never existed. The
reluctance to look the facts of history in the face has favored the
growth of a vast superstructure of fable."
Let us avoid this "misfortune of the churches," this "vast
superstructure of fable," and be willing to look the facts of Scripture
and history squarely in the face.
It appears by Scripture that our Saviour did not baptize with water and
that none of his apostles were so baptized _in his time_.[179]