They should respect the
judgment of the primitive Church, and adopt a practice sanctioned by
the continuous belief of so many ages. We repeat that prayer for the
dead is a salutary practice."
Several others, rising to our point of view, drawing their inspiration
from the sources of Catholic charity, tell you, with the theologian
Collier (Part II. p. 100): "Prayer for the dead revives the belief in
the immortality of the soul, withdraws the dark veil which covers the
tomb, and establishes relations between this world and the other. Had
it been preserved, we should probably not have had amongst us so much
incredulity. I cannot conceive why our Church, which is so remote from
the primitive times of Christianity, should have abandoned or disdained
a custom that had never been interrupted; which, on the contrary, as we
have reason to believe from Scripture, existed in ancient times; which
was practiced in the Apostolic age, in the time of miracles and
revelations; introduced amongst the articles of faith, and never
rejected, except by Arius."
"It was evidently in use in the Church in the time of St. Augustine,
and down to the sixteenth century. If we do nothing for our dead, if we
omit to occupy ourselves with them and pray for them, as was formerly
done in the Holy Supper, we break off all intercourse with the Saints;
and then, how could we dare to say that we remain in communion with the
blessed? And if we break off in this way from the most noble part of
the universal Church, may it not be said that we mutilate our belief
and reject one of the articles of the Christian faith?"
"Yes," says the German Sheldon, in his turn, "prayer for the dead is
one of the most ancient and most efficacious practices of the Christian
religion.
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