As I recall, Nathan, there were people in my former (original) Continental Reformed church who were excommunicated for rebaptism. The grounds were along the line of denying the efficacy of the Spirit's witness through the ecclesiastical sacrament of baptism (or something like that; I'm trying to say as an adult now what I was hearing as a child back then.) I remember a friend of my wife's, before we were married and when we were seeing each other regularly, whose father was excommunicated for those reasons. We talked about it a lot whenever we had leisure to do so. And some of what I said above comes from that, but mostly from what we were taught when I was in my teens.

In summary it works like this: baptism is a once-and-for-all thing that the Church conveys by her authority from Christ. She must be responsible in who she baptizes, of course, but once baptized always baptized, assuming that the baptism was done in proper manner according to the confessional standards. To repeat it is to deny the first one, and that is considered a very serious offence.

There may have been examples of what McArthur is talking about. Unfortunately the Protestants as a whole were not as unified in doctrine and practice as would have been desirable. But the term 'Protestants' is a pretty general term too. It included everyone who broke from the RCC, and was not confined to the Reformed only.

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JohnV :detective:

John Vandervliet
Ontario, Canada
member of: Canadian Reformed Church
"In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are" C.S Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism