the Latin or Romish Church, just as in the Greek, confirmation immediately followed infant baptism whenever a bishop might be near at hand.* Such was the case, for example, very notably, in the confirmations respectively of the Princess Elizabeth and the Prince Edward (afterwards King Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth), under the reign of their father, Henry VIII., just before the Reformation. From the baptismal font the infant princess, and the infant prince, were each alike carried for confirmation straight to the Church altar; where the Archbishop of Canterbury was in either case attending to confirm the infant neophyte.† -In case of neglecting to bring their children within the limited time of delay permitted, the parents were to be temporarily excommunicated, and suffer the penalties, sometimes severe, which then attached even to such Church excommunication. As to the notion, whensoever adults might be confirmed, (a case which even then sometimes occurred,) of those adults having to do anything actively in the way of confirming their baptismal vows, it was a notion that would have been probably reprobated, so as in fact it was afterwards in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, as alike absurd and impious.§

of Trent yet further extended the age of children for confirmation. "If it be judged undesirable to wait till the twelfth year, at any rate it may be well to defer confirmation till the child's seventh year." -Catech. Trid. ii. 3. 17. * Maskell, i. 25.

† See the graphic and interesting account given by Hall, the chronicler of the Wars of the Roses, in my Appendix.

See Maskell, Introd. ibid. and i. 25. Also Martene, ibid. Compare, in reference to the penalties persons unconfirmed were themselves subject to, in an earlier age of the Church, Bingham, xii. 3. 8.

§ Thus speaks the Catechism:-"Quidam non minus imperitè quam impiè finxerunt confirmationis vocabulum ab eo deduci quòd olim qui infantes baptizati erant, quum jam adulti essent, ad episcopum adducebantur, ut fidem Christianam, quam in baptismo susceperant, confirmarent."-Catech. Trident. ii. 3. 20. Here the imperitè refers apparently to the historical mistake, broached fifteen years before in King Edward's second Prayer Book, (see Note + p. 16, infrà,) as if in patristic times such had been the nature of the

Such, I say, was through the middle age in England, as well as the rest of European Christendom, the fearfully superstitious rite of Confirmation. Well might Wickliffe exclaim with indignation against it as unscriptural; and a device of the Evil One for the purpose of deluding the people.* Was it not so, if suggesting that it was only from the episcopal laying on of hands that a child could receive the saving influence of God's Holy Spirit; and that from that act, by the mere episcopal opus operatum, he would, and must, receive it?-As a sacrament it had been similarly rejected by the Waldenses a century before Wickliffe;+ who was himself the morning-star of the Reformation.

And at length, in God's great mercy, the light of the blessed Reformation was made to shine on our favoured land. Then, whereas in the Continental reformed Churches, together with the abolition of the old Episcopal form of Church government, there was generally aboconfirmation rite itself; the impiè to the very notion of such a thing. There seems to be also a reference to certain expressed views to the same effect by some other of the reformed Churches shortly before the English Reformed Liturgies under King Edward. See Paper ii. in my Appendix.

Le Bas, Life of Wickliffe, p. 340.-Wickliffe adds: "And for advancing the dignity and importance of the episcopal order." Le Bas protests against Wickliffe's language here as extravagant, and even fanatical; and refers to Hooker, E. P. Bk. v. ch. 66, as satisfactorily answering it. Yet I cannot see any such answer in Hooker. Indeed Hooker cites a passage from Jerom, in which Jerom actually anticipated Wickliffe in the latter clause of his inculpatory statement saying that the prerogative of communicating the Holy Ghost, though not expressly restricted to them in Holy Scripture, might yet not improperly be assigned to bishops, distinctively, "ad honorem potius sacerdotii, quam ad legis necessitatem." (Adv. Lucif. ch. 4.) And Hooker himself even approvingly endorses the sentiment.

It is a marvel to me that such a man as Hooker should not have insisted, as I have, on the essential difference of the Anglican service of Confirmation from the old patristic and mediæval rite; but on the contrary, by identifying it substantially with the latter, have left it open to attack as superstitious and unscriptural. Mr. Le Bas does protest against the Papal corruptions of the rite, though without particularizing; and not quite consistently.

† So Bellarmine, Op. T. iii. 300, from Æneas Sylvius.

lished also the old post-baptismal rite of Confirmation," it was otherwise ordered in England. By the Christian bishops and doctors, to whom was then committed the momentous charge of reforming or re-constituting the Anglican Church, in accordance with the doctrines and requirements of the Gospel Scriptures, when considering what to do in regard of this ancient but, as for ages it had been administered, superstitious and unscriptural ordinance (so they judged it) of Confirmation, it was wisely thought that the question was one which necessarily and preliminarily involved that of the age at which Christian baptism ought to be administered; whether in infancy, or not until adult age. And, after much careful consideration of the subject, they came to the following conclusions:-Ist, that the baptism of young children, or infants, was to be retained in the Church, "as most agreeable with the institution of Christ;" 2ndly, that, as a fit sequel and complement to infant baptism, it was desirable that there should be also a service of adult confirmation,-not indeed as a sacrament of apostolic institution,† but as an appointment of the now reformed English Church; and with essential differences, such as have been already intimated (two more especially), between the old Romish rite of confirmation, and the reformed and new:-two, I should say, besides the restoration of that Scriptural but in the West long-disused form of blessing by the laying on of hands, the disuse of unction, and rejection of the sacramental opus operatum doctrine.‡

* On the question whether the rite was altogether abolished in them, see my Appendix, Paper ii.

+ Such is the view expressed in our Art. xxv. on the Sacraments. "Those five commonly called Sacraments,-i.e. Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel; being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, [so Confirmation, as the rite was viewed and conducted in the Church prior to the Reformation,] partly as states of life allowed in the Scriptures, [so Matrimony,] but have not like nature of sacraments.

The doctrine, and the very expression, were reprobated in the Articles in King Edward's second Prayer Book. (Parker ed. p. 578.)

Let me, in conclusion of the present Lecture, recapitulate these two particular differences. First then, we saw it was appointed that thereafter none were to be the subjects of the ordinance but those who had come to years of discretion, and who had further been catechised and instructed in the grand principles of the Christian faith. *-Secondly, that one main object of the rite should be that of baptized adults, after such instruction, publicly and deliberately (if so they chose) confirming, or ratifying, the vows made for them by their sponsors at baptism; in other words, accepting the conditions on which, according to the true doctrine of the Gospel, already recognised by their sponsors, the blessings of Christian baptism were alone understood to attach to the baptized.+--Preliminary to all which there would of course be needed, on the part of the candidates, an inquiry into, and satisfaction respecting, The same is implied, says Bishop Burnet, in our present Article xxv. (ad init.): "for the virtue of the sacraments being there put in the worthy receiving excludes the doctrine of opus operatum."

The disuse of the unction is mourned over as a grievous loss in the Oxford Tract, 86, pp. 27-29; and by others of the same school effort has been made of late to lower the age required to one younger than "years of discretion."

*For the comfort of parents on occasion of this injunction the Rubric following was added:-" And that no man shall think that any detriment shall come to children by deferring of their confirmation: for it is certain by God's Word that children being baptized, if they depart out of this life in their infancy, are undoubtedly saved." So the Rubric to Confirmation in King Edward's first Liturgy of 1549, p. 121 (Parker ed.); a Rubric repeated in the Liturgy of 1552, ib. p. 295, and in Elizabeth's Prayer Book of 1562, p. 210.-With which contrast the early unscriptural doctrine of Cyprian and others, cited p. 6.

+ In the Two Liturgies of King Edward VI., of A.D. 1549, 1552, pp. 120, 295, (Parker ed.,) one reason given for our Church's thus re-formed rite was, "Because it is agreeable with the usage of the Church in times past thatconfirmation should be ministered to them that are of perfect age: " and then," that they, being instructed in Christ's religion, should openly, before the Church, profess their own faith," and (ed. 1552) "ratify and confirm" the baptismal vows made by their godfathers and godmothers for them. To this doubtless very principally refer the Tridentine imperite and impiè cited p. 13, suprà.

the Christian faith and its evidences. And, in order to the candidates being the better strengthened and confirmed in their pious resolutions, it was ordained by the founders of our Reformed Church that the Christian congregation should be gathered together on occasion of the performance of the confirmation rite; and God's grace and help invoked on their behalf by the bishop, together with the patriarchal and apostolic form of blessing by the laying on of his hands, and with the accompanying prayers of the whole assembled congregation.* A service more reasonable, more likely to be useful with God's blessing, or more accordant with the general spirit of a really Christian Church, I cannot imagine.

I may observe that in 1662, after the Savoy Conferences, the Preface to the Confirmation Service was curtailed, but its essentials retained, as in the present form. Cardwell, Conferences, p. 383.