Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr was the first recorded individual to baptize someone in something other than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ: “For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water…And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. This is done because Christ said: Unless you are born again you will not enter the kingdom of heaven, and it is obviously impossible for anyone, having once been born, to reenter his mother’s womb. An explanation of how repentant sinners are to be freed from their sins is given through the prophet Isaiah in the words: Wash yourselves and be clean. Remove the evil from your souls; learn to do what is right. Be just to the orphan, vindicate the widow. Come, let us reason together, say the Lord. If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as wool; if they are like crimson, I will make them white as snow. But if you do not heed me, you shall be devoured by the sword. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.” He is credited for introducing the first semi-trinitarian formula with Jesus name at it’s center still. It is a breakaway or deviation from the Apostles historically known formula of Jesus, Lord Jesus, or the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yet the Apostle Peter taught, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins”… (Acts 2:38) And the Bible shows: “Then those that gladly received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:42). Christian baptism includes repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus. Notwithstanding Justin Martyr was the first to deviate from the apostles formula in such dramatic effect, but he was not to be the last.
Tertullian (a fellow Greek and bitheism adherent, also the first man to coin the word “Trinity” ) along with others will also further change the baptism formula from the apostles original formula. Dr. Hare says in his Church History: “Baptism as an initiatory rite was performed simply in the name of Jesus. As soon as the doctrine of the Trinity was developed, and the Gospel of Matthew brought from India to Egypt, trine immersion, with individual exceptions, became gradually the rule. To the use of the formula furnished by Matthew in the administration of trine immersion we have the testimony of Augustine (de Bapt., lib. vi, cap. 25), Cyprian (Epist. lxxiii), Tertullian (de Baptism chapter 13), and others.” Notwithstanding, Tertullian (200 A.D.) acknowledges that it is through baptism we become Christians. In fact he wrote against those who would try to dissolve this truth. “Happy is our sacrament Of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! We, little fishes, after the example of our (Icqus) Jesus Christ, are born in water. The consequence is, that a viper of the Cainite heresy, lately conversant in this quarter, has carried away a great number with her most venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism.”
Robinson, in his History of Baptism, says: “There is no mention of baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in immediately post-Apostolic times.” This testimony, of a negative character, certainly becomes very strong and significant in view of the fact that Peter enjoined baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38); that when Philip preached in Samaria, to which place Peter and John were sent upon hearing “that Samaria had received the Word of God,” those who believed “were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8:5, 12, 16); and that under the instructions of Paul those who had been baptized “unto John’s baptism” were “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 19:3, 5).
Twenty years after Tertullian puts forth his ”Trintas” (or the trinity), Origen introduces the doctrine of infant baptism at his pre-baptismal school in Alexandria, Egypt. Infant baptism by sprinkling becomes compulsory in the Western church world by 415 A.D. Under the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., the trinity formula of water baptism becomes the official doctrine for all Christian churches in the Roman Empire, by Imperial decree. All religious systems outside of the trinity were declared to be heresies including the teachings of the Apostles and the teachings of Arias along with many other groups. Under Constantine, the so-called trinity Christian religious world became the national religion of the Empire. At this time the prophecy of the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 2:1-2 was fulfilled. “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall, be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring you, upon themselves swift, destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom, the way of truth (The Gospel of the Apostles) shall be evil spoken of.” Following the Council of Nicaea the Apostolic church world within the boundaries of the Roman Empire was either driven underground and scattered by the persecution from the government, and by the Roman Catholic Church (or the trinity believers).
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/409762_justin-martyr