Some of Zwingli's closest students concluded that he had stopped short. If scripture alone decides, they argued, then infant baptism must go, because the New Testament shows only believers being baptised on their own confession, and a church should be a voluntary body of the committed rather than everyone born within the city walls. That second claim was the dangerous one, because it separated the congregation from the commonwealth.
The council ordered infants to be baptised and the meetings to stop. On 21 January 1525, in a house in Zurich, Conrad Grebel baptised George Blaurock at his request and Blaurock then baptised the others present. It is the founding act of the Anabaptist movement, and it was done by ordinary laymen with a jug of water.
Repression followed quickly. Felix Manz was drowned in the Limmat in January 1527, his hands and feet bound, the manner of execution chosen to mock the practice he had died for, and he is generally counted the first Anabaptist martyr killed by a Protestant government. Others were executed or driven out, and the movement spread into Moravia, south Germany and the Netherlands, where it produced the Mennonites, the Hutterites and later the Amish, along with the principles of adult baptism, congregational discipline, refusal of the sword and separation of church and state that shaped later free church Christianity everywhere. The Reformed church of Zurich has since publicly expressed regret for the persecution, and a memorial stands beside the river.