BAPTISM of the Dead

BAPTISM of the Dead was also a sort of vicarious baptism, formerly in use, where a person dying without baptism, another was baptized in his stead.

St Chrysostom tells us, this was practised among the Marcionites with a great deal of ridiculous ceremony; which he thus describes: After any catechumen was dead, they hid a living man under the bed of the deceased; then coming to the dead man, they asked him, whether he would receive baptism? and he making no answer, the other answered for him, and said, he would be baptized in his stead: and so they baptized the living for the dead.

Epiphanius assures us, the like was also practised among the Corinthians. This practice they pretended to found on the apostle's authority; alleging that text of St Paul for it, If the dead rise not at all, what shall they do who are baptized for the dead? A text which has given occasion to a great variety of different systems and explications. Boetius enumerates no less than nine different opinions, among learned divines, concerning the sense of the phrase being baptized for the dead.

St Ambrose, and Walafred Strabo, seem clearly of opinion, that the apostle had respect to such a custom then in being; and several moderns have given into the same opinion, as Baronius, Jos. Scaliger, Justellus, and Grotius.

Several among the Roman-catholics, as Bellarmin, Salmeron, Menochius, and a number of schoolmen, understand it of the baptism of tears, and penance, and prayers, which the living undergo for the dead; and thus allege it as a proof of the belief of purgatory in St Paul's days.