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Strange to say, like so many other believers of that age, from a misguided reverence for the sanctity of baptism, he was still only a catechumen, and by a wise provision of the canons ineligible to the episcopate.

Before we start on why that was done and why baptism is NOT just symbolism and why we baptise infants, I'll quote this from Tim Staples book Surprised by Truth

I toook Jimmy Swaggart's challenge: 'We would like to challenge the Catholic Church to demonstrate that the saints and martyrs of the first three hundred years accepted the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church as it exists today' I acquired a copy of J.B. Lightfoot's The Apostolic Fathers and devoured it. I went to the library on campus and began to study the ives and works of other Fathers of The CHurch, reading their writings in the original Greek and checking their theological arguments against what the Greek text of Scripture said. I researched all of the early councils of The CHurch. To my dismay, all I found was Catholic truth. I could not believe Brother Jimmy couldd have read what I read and issued his 'challenge'. The writings of the Church Fathers clearly show that the early Church ws Catholic long before the time of the Emperor Constantine"

The 'symbolic view' of Baptism originates as a doctrin of the Anabaptists movement which broke away from MArtin Luther's reform efforts

Both Catholicism and Orthodoxy hold to the sacramental and efficacious nature of baptism.

And yet those outside the Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Churches ask: are we saved by faith or by baptism? Are we saved by beleiving or by the Spirit? These are false dichtomies.

If youwant to receive salvation, justification, new birth and eternal life, what does scripture say?
By believeing in Christ (Jm 3:16, Acts 16:31)
By repentance Acts 2:38, 2 Pet3:9
By baptism Jm 3:5, 1 Pet 3:21, Titus 3:5
By the work of the Spirit Jm 3:5, 2 Cor 3:6
By declaring wit our mouths Lk 12:8, Rom 10:9
By coming to a knowledge of the truth 1 Tim 2:4, Heb 10:26
By works Rom 2:6, Jame 2:24
By grace Acts 15:11, Eph 2:8
By His blood Rom 5:9, Heb 9:22
By His righteousness Rom 5:17, 2 Pet 1:1
By His Cross Eph 2:16, Col 2:14

We can't take out any ONE of these and proclaim it ALONE as themeans of salvation. The Bible is a book in it's entirety -- no one part contradicts the other. To restrict this to faith alone or works alone is false -- salvation, justification is more than that, Can we be saved without faith? No. Can we besaved without repenteance? No. Withotu God's face? No. Without Baptism? No. Without the Holy Spirit? No

These are all involved and necessary, you cannot dismiss one as the means of obtaining eternal life, neither can ONE be emphasized to the exclusion of another. They are all involved in salvation and entry into The CHurch. The CHurch does not divide these various elements of salvation up, overemphasizing some while ignoring others: rather, she holds them all in their fullness

To understand the reverence for Baptism and how it was not merely symbolism in the ancient Church, there are many instances, but the one I like best is from Justin Martyr (100-165)

And we who have approached God through Him (Christ) have received not carnal, but spiritual circumsion, which Enoch and those like him observed. And we have recieved it through baptism, since we were sinners, by God's mercy; and all men may equally obtain it

I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated outselves ot God when we had been made new hrough Christ.. As many are peruaded and beleive that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are isntructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. then they are brought by us where there is water and are regenerated int eh same manner in which we were outselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father... and of our Savior Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water/ For Christ also said. "Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven' An for this rite we have learned from the apostles in order that we may not remain the children of necessiry and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge and may obtain int he water the remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who choose to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father

And this food is called among us the Eucharists, of which no one is allowed to partake but the ma who believes tha the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed int he washing that is for the remission of sins and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined

As you can see Baptism was held as far more than a symbol in the early Church and it was held in high reverence and those who entered it believed it remitted one's sins. HEnce the tendency to want to undergo baptism later in life, even just before dying so that the sins would be forgiven and the catechumen would not sin anymore. This was based on the solemnity of the sacrament and the reason Luther argues that infant baptism is God-pleasing because persons so baptized were reborn and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

As says Clement of Alexandria

For thus He wishes us to be converted and to be as children acknowledging him who is truly out father, regenerated by water and this is a different beginning than creation. BEing baptised, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; beign made perfect, we are made immortal.

Or Tertullian

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

And from Origen (c 185 to 254)

The Church received from the Apostles the tradition of giving Baptism even to infants. For the Apostles, to whom were committed teh secrets of divine mysteries, knew that there is in everyone the innate stains of sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit

Or Cyprian of Carthage (martyred 258)

In respect to the case of infants, which you say ought not to be baptised within the second or third day after birth, and that hte law of ncient circumcision be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptised and sanctified within the eighth day,we all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man.. we ought to shrink from hindering an infant, who being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh accrding to Adam, he has ontracted teh contagion of the ancient death as its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins -- that to him are remitted, not his own sincs, but the sins of another (Adam)

Ambrose himself said "Now, even the catechumen believes in the cross of the Lord Jesus, wherewith he too is signed; but unless he be baptised int he Name of th FAther, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he cannot receive remission of sins and not gain the gift of spiritual grace

Or St. Augustine, so revered by the reformers says in Epistle 28

Who is so impious as to wish to exclude infants from the kindgom of heaven by forbidding them to be baptised and born again in Christ? This the Church always had, always held; this she received from the faith of our ancestors; this she perserveringly guards even to the end

Whoever says that even infants are vivified in Christ when they depart this life without the participation of His Sacrament (Baptism), both opposes the Apostolic preaching and condemns the whole Church which hastens to baptize infants, because it unhesitatingly believes that otherwise they can not possibly be vivified in Christ,"

Do not accept false dichtomies. Do not has an either/or mentality with regards to scripture and tradition. It is not either baptism or The Spirit. IS it not obvious that Jesus Christ himself did not think this way? He simplyu said "Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kindgom of heaven"

Baptism is held to be necessary both necessitate medii and præcepti. This doctrine is rounded on the words of Christ. In John 3, He declares: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he can not enter into the kingdom of God." Christ makes no exception to this law and it is therefore general in its application, embracing both adults and infants. It is consequently not merely a necessity of precept but also a necessity of means.

The Catholic Church maintains absolutely that the law of Christ applies as well to infants as to adults. When the Redeemer declares (John 3) that it is necessary to be born again of water and the Holy Ghost in order to enter the Kingdom of God, His words may be justly understood to mean that He includes all who are capable of having a right to this kingdom. Now, He has asserted such a right even for those who are not adults, when He says (Matthew 19:14): "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such." It has been objected that this latter text does not refer to infants, inasmuch as Christ says "to come to me". In the parallel passage in St. Luke (18:15), however, the text reads: "And they brought unto him also infants, that he might touch them"; and then follow the words cited from St. Matthew. In the Greek text, the words brephe and prosepheron refer to infants in arms.

Moreover, St. Paul (Colossians 2) says that baptism in the New Law has taken the place of circumcision in the Old. It was especially to infants that the rite of circumcision was applied by Divine precept. If it be said that there is no example of the baptism of infants to be found in the Bible, we may answer that infants are included in such phrases as: "She was baptized and her household" (Acts 16:15); "Himself was baptized, and all his house immediately" (Acts 16:33); "I baptized the household of Stephanus" (1 Corinthians 1:16).

To the objection that baptism requires faith, theologians reply that adults must have faith, but infants receive habitual faith, which is infused into them in the sacrament of regeneration. As to actual faith, they believe on the faith of another; as St. Augustine (De Verb. Apost., xiv, xviii) beautifully says: "He believes by another, who has sinned by another."

It is for the same reason that the perpetually insane, who have never had the use of reason, are in the same category as infants in what relates to the conferring of baptism, and consequently the sacrament is valid if administered.