Ghost on the Apostles Peter and John laying hands on them, to refer to the subject of confirmation; and in a long note, appended to pp. 262-264, makes prɔfession of answering objections such as had been urged against his previously propounded views of the rite.

But I do not see that he has at all answered my own objections; to which indeed he makes no direct allusion. He seems (I am forced in the interests of truth so to say) to have even yet more than before proved the untenableness of his views by what is there given by him as matter of reply.

Ist, He argues that the recorded cases of Christian converts receiving the Holy Ghost, even in his simple gracious influences,* except by apostles' laying on of hands, are so few, and so exceptional, being those of Saul of Tarsus, of Cornelius, and of the Ethiopian eunuch, that the exceptions rather prove, than disprove, what was the rule. Had Dr. G. then really forgotten the cases of the Galatian Christians who received the Holy Ghost by "the hearing of faith;" of the Colossian Christians who had very possibly received it without ever having seen Paul, or any other apostle, in the flesh; and again of the Roman Christians, and multitudes of other spiritually enlightened converts, elsewhere noticed in the apostolic epistles?

2ndly, He endorses Mr. Sadler's argument about Heb. vi. 2; that because, out of the six things there mentioned, all but the laying on of hands are "matters with which each individual soul in the Church is personally concerned," therefore it must so be likewise in regard of that sixth thing; which it could only be in the sense of a laying on of hands in the rite of Confirmation. But what then of the Barriσμоι, properly translated washings, in the plural: How was each individual soul interested in them? Even supposing that ẞarтισμοι were a noun applicable to Christian baptism, would

*Simply these, it is evident, in his case of the eunuch.

Dr. Goulburn deem more than one baptism necessary for each individual soul? The difficulty (the insuperable difficulty) hence arising is simply passed over by Mr. Sadler and Dr. Goulburn in silence.*

3rdly, But "how," he asks, "except for an apostolic commencement, could the rite have established itself by the end of the second century in the professing Church?" Would Dr. Goulburn ignore, let me ask, Christ's ever memorable parable of the tares and wheat? "While men slept, the enemy sowed tares." Looking at the fearful anti-Christianism of the principle of a bishop's or presbyter's opus operatum, as necessary to a man's salvation, of which the confirmation rite as even then ministered was both an illustration and a helping onward in the Church, there can be no doubt in my own mind, as argued already in my first Lecture, that it was not an exemplification of the originally sown wheat, but of the tares.†

In conclusion, let me give a sentence or two of citation from Suicer on the subject of the rite of Confirmation, or Laying on of Hands;-all confirmatory of the views that I have presented of it. It is from the article in his Thesarus on Xpioua (unction) that I

make the citation.

"Confirmatio prioribus ecclesiæ Latinæ temporibus ne de nomine quidem nota erat. Quis enim veterum Patrum meminit in hâc cæremoniâ verbi confirmare? Non Tertullianus, non Cyprianus, non Ambrosius, non Augustinus, non Hieronymus, nec quisquam veterum Latinorum patrum mentionem facit confirmationis hoc

See my remarks on this, p. 150, suprà.

+ A tract by Bishop Forbes, of Brechin, entitled "The Seal of the Lord, or, Catechism on Confirmation," has met my eye, while this is passing through the press. And I see in it precisely the same errors regarding the priestly or episcopal opus operatum as above noted;-errors, that is, as judged of by the standard either of Holy Scripture, or of the Church of England.

See, however, on Jerom my remarks, p. 7, suprà.

significatu. Postea (i.e. post primitiva seu apostolica ecclesiæ tempora) pars baptismi integrans habita est, sine quâ nec perfectum eum (baptismum) censebant. Quod et ipsum, quamvis antiquum sit respectu recentioris ævi, si tamen apostolica tempora et instituta respiciantur, planè est novum.'

APPENDIX V.

ON A REVIEW OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THESE CONFIRMATION LECTURES IN THE CHURCHMAN."

Out of some six or seven reviews of these Lectures that met my eye after their first publication two only were unfavourable, viz., one in the "Guardian and one in the "Churchman." To each I addressed letters in reply; which letters, with the rejoinders that ensued, were inserted in full in the Appendix to my second edition of the Lectures. My reply to the Guardian," however, and correspondence that ensued afterwards, I do not think it worth the while to reprint again. For the whole strength of the Editor's, or Reviewer's, hostile notice of my book consisted in

66

* On looking lately into Newman's "Apologia," and the Oxford Tracts, I have been painfully struck with the fact that Dr. Wordsworth's and Dr. Goulburn's assumed principles, 1st, of Church bishops being the apostles' successors, (as if with a perpetuation of the apostolate, not simply of the episcopate,)-2ndly, of the ex opere operato virtue (more or less) of Church sacraments,-3rdly, of the eucharist's sacrificial character,-4thly, of the authority of primitive Church usage and doctrine, (this primitive embracing, at least, the first four or five centuries,) as if of itself, and without the check of careful comparison with God's written word, furnishing a sufficient standard of right doctrine and practice,-I say that the principles thus assumed and advocated by Drs. Goulburn and Wordsworth were the very principles on which the Oxford Tractarian system began with Dr. Newman, and with Dr. Newman had its proper ending in Rome.

misrepresentations of what I had written in it, or mere dogmatic adverse assertions of doctrine on his part: besides that on the great subject of the Evidences of Christianity, which constitute that of my fourth and fifth Lectures, he actually declared the subject to be "irrelevant, and in any effectual sense impossible." Moreover, to my request that he would allow his Journal to be the medium of two or three letters between myself and Drs. Wordsworth and Goulburn, on the important points of difference between us,-for which there seemed the more reason, as the truth of the historic facts alleged in my Lectures, if proved, and which would go far to decide the truth in the main controversy between us, was a point admitting of easy decision, the Editor declined to admit such correspondence in the "Guardian," my views on the subject of confirmation being, he said, too "outré." Thus he effectively let judgment go against himself by default.

In the "Churchman," however, the Editor ventured to impugn the accuracy of certain of my statements, and to allege certain historic authorities against me. Hence the propriety of reprinting in full, as I now do, the Paper from the Appendix to my second edition on that controversy.

1. In a review of my Lectures in the "CHURCHMAN of Dec. 28, 1865, the Editor, or Reviewer, besides certain other rather unreasonable objections to them, finds particular fault with my insisting on "the

*

* For example, with regard to my statement that God seals with his Holy Spirit many that are not confirmed, and many before they are confirmed, he argues that, even supposing this, "it should not take away our faith in God that He will give us his blessing in his appointed and regular modes:"adding; "The real question is, Is God anywhere to be found? May we go to Him in the sacraments with an undoubted faith? Or must we always go hesitatingly and despairingly?

Thus, calling confirmation a sacrament, contrary to the language of our Church Articles, and assuming that confirmation is a rite appointed by God, though not proving it, he would have it that

essential difference of the Anglican service of confirmation from the old patristic and mediæval rite."

He did not, however, then and there attempt to show me to have been wrong in my statement. How could he? My readers, by comparing the confirmation rite of the Princess Elizabeth, just before the Reformation, as printed in this edition, with the confirmation rite just after it, as appointed by the Preface to the Confirmation Service in our Reformed Church Prayer Book, cannot but at once see the total difference, in all but the name, between the one and the other; and that the Reformation stands up between them like an impassable barrier of separation.

In an editorial article, however, in the "Churchman" of the 26th of April, 1866, the Editor set himself to supply his previous lack of argument against my view as above stated. "Waiving theological questions, and keeping to facts," he proceeds to trace out the sources and origin of what might seem most peculiar and characteristic in our present Confirmation Service. And, Ist, he finds the source of one of these characteristics in the practice of the pre-Reformation Anglican Church, while yet, of course, a branch of the Romish Papal Church; viz., that of the previous instruction now required in candidates before confirmation. "As the English Church previous to the Reformation ordered again and again that those who received confirmation should be instructed in the Belief, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, these orders," he says, "were embodied in our Reformed Church's Confirmation Service, with the further addition of the Church

.

except in and through that sacramental rite, we must ever approach God despairingly, if desirous of the gift of his Spirit. But then did the Editor of the "Churchman" never read, or hear, of Christ's saying, "Ask, and it shall be given you. If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" etc., etc. Or, having read and heard this, does he determinately ignore it?