the prayers of the attendant congregation, is to confirm, in the sense of strengthening and establishing the candidates in their pious resolution. Secondly, observe that the age at which the rite of Confirmation is here appointed to take place is when children have come to years of discretion; and after their having moreover acquainted themselves with certain engagements made for them by their sponsors at baptism, as the recognised conditions of their becoming entitled to the baptismal blessings; as well as with certain summaries also of a Christian's faith and practice, such as that in our own Church Catechism. Thirdly, observe that the rite of Confirmation is here spoken of, not as a rite enjoined by Jesus Christ and his apostles, but only as one enjoined by "the Church," that is, of course, the English reformed Church: it being said, "The Church hath thought good to order that none hereafter shall be confirmed but such as can say the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, and have been further instructed in the Church Catechism."-Fourthly, in the clause just read there should be marked what is implied, as well as what is expressed, in the little word hereafter. For it seems to imply that before the time of our English Church Reformation the rite of Confirmation was conducted in a manner, at an age, and with views of the ordinance very different. All which indeed was notably the case.

In explanation of this I must beg to carry you back in thought some 1600 or 1700 years, to an early period in the history of the then professing Christian Church; at which period however, though so early, the leaven of very serious error had already begun to insinuate itself within it. You will remember, doubtless, how our blessed Lord, in one of his wonderful parables,* intimated that very soon tares, or rather a kind of wheat-like looking weed,† would be sown in the world

Matt. xiii. 24-30, 36-43.

"In the great cornfields of Samaria women and children were

wide field of the gospel-kingdom, and there intermix with the good wheat; meaning thereby, as He Himself said in his explanation of the parable, unsound doctrines and unsound professors in the Church. Moreover in other prophecies of the future, spoken either by Himself or by his divinely inspired apostles, there was further implied that what was unsound and evil would increase in it gradually more and more; until at length, from its infecting the mass, there would result, albeit within the pale of the still professedly Christian Church, and as characteristic of its members, a general apostacy from the true faith.* Yet further it was intimated, and I think not obscurely, as I shall hope to explain to you in a subsequent Lecture on the prophetic evidence of Christianity, that one grand characteristic of the predicted apostacy would consist in the substitution of the human Church minister for the Church's divine Saviour, in respect of one or another of those various saving offices which He has Himself graciously undertaken to fulfil; and which, I need hardly say, He alone can effectually fulfil, for our salvation.†

Now it was in the administration, and doctrine inculcated about it, of the rite of Christian baptism, including the laying on of hands, or (as afterwards called) confirmation, which was then considered and ministered (in a way presently to be explained) as a simple appendage

employed in picking out from the wheat the tall green stalks still called by the Arabs zuwân. This is apparently the same word as the Greek Siavia, in the Latin vulgate rendered lolia, in our version tares. These stalks, it can easily be imagined, if sown designedly throughout the fields, would be inseparable from the wheat; from which, even when growing naturally and by chance, they are at first sight hardly distinguishable."---Stanley; “Sinai and Palestine," p. 426.

In a foot-note he adds thus. "The Arabic word zuwan is derived from zân, nausea. Zijavior is found nowhere but in the New Testament; and in the ecclesiastical writers who have probably derived it from thence."

Matt. xxiv. 11; Acts xx. 29, 30; 2 Tim. iii. 13; 2 Thess. ii. 3, etc. + Comp Matt. vii. 15; 2 Thess. ii. 4; 1 John ii. 18; Rev. xiii. 11.

or adjunct of the baptismal rite,*-that innovation of this kind on the pure primitive gospel rites and doctrines seems first to have shown itself. (You see how closely these historic details are connected with our present subject of Confirmation.) We may date the beginning of the innovation from quite late in the second century;† that is, about a century after the death of the longestlived of Christ's apostles, St. John. For in the earlier writings of Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, and other Christian Fathers previous to the closing in of the second century, there is, I believe, no trace of it. From after that time, however, the new views spread rapidly; and, as time proceeded, will be found to have become more and more prominent, and effective for evil, in the history of the Church.

It is to be understood that in the Roman Empire at that time, as Christianity was being preached, and converts gathered in from out of its heathen population, (just as now in India, and in other heathen countries where Christian missionaries are preaching, and converts being made to Christianity,) the custom existed alike of adult baptism, and infant baptism:-adult, in the case of grown-up converts, when themselves the first of a heathen family brought to believe in Christ; infant, in regard to the children of each such convert, and those of families previously Christianized. And, of course, as the Church advanced, and more especially after Christianity had become triumphant over heathenism throughout the Roman world, (a religious revolution

*So Bingham, xii. 1. 1: a book to which reference may be made generally in regard of all that concerns the history of the confirmation rite for the first six centuries.

+ Tertullian, writing about A.D. 195, "De Baptismo," is, I believe, the earliest author who speaks of the baptismal χειροθεσία.

Indeed Justin negatives the fact of any such rite of laying on of hands existing in his time. For in his first Apology, written about A.D. 150, in a full and particular account of the rites of Christian baptism, he makes no mention of it; but only of the adult convert after baptism proceeding to communicate in the Lord's Supper. See Bishop Kaye's Justin Martyr, ch. 4.

which began, and was consummated, in the course of the fourth century after Christ,) adult baptisms became fewer, and infant baptisms more common; till at length the latter came to be the rule, not the exception. Now then, an expression having already by the opening of the third century incautiously come into vogue, by which Church bishops were designated as successors of the Apostles,"* the unwarranted notion began further about this time to insinuate itself of bishops being also inheritors of the apostolic powers and prerogatives. And, forasmuch as it was Apostles distinctively (viz. St. Peter and St. John) who, after the baptism of certain of the Samaritans by the deacon Philip, laid hands on them, in order to their receiving (as it is said) the Holy Ghost, and another Apostle distinctively, viz. St. Paul, who did the same in the case of certain disciples at Ephesus,† thence the inference that, although the common minister might baptize, and by mere virtue of the baptismal rite impart (so they said) forgiveness of sins, yet, in order to that highest benefit of Christian baptism, viz. its being born not only of water but of the Spirit, there was needed also the laying on of hands,‡ and that by the Bishop.§ Which latter ceremonial accordingly began from the same early epoch to be accompanied with anointing with chrism, as the outward sign of this supposed anointing with the Holy Ghost; || So first, I think, Cyprian, Ep. 45. (Ed. Amstel. 1691 Bingham, ii. 2. 2. † Acts viii. 12-17; xix. 6. So Tertull. De Bapt. ch. 6, 8. See Note* p. 7.

See

$ Cyprian, Ep. 72, 73. From which epistles I subjoin the extracts following: Apud nos geritur ut qui in ecclesiâ baptizantur præpositis ecclesiæ offerantur, et per nostram orationem, ac manus impositionem, Spiritum sanctum consequantur, et signaculo Dominico consummentur.' "Tunc enim plenè sanctificari, et esse filii Dei possunt, si sacramento utroque nascantur: cum scriptum sit, Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aquâ et Spiritu, non potest introire in regnum Dei." Cyprian refers, and so too Firmilian and Jerom, to Acts viii. and xix., as the Scriptural precedents and warrant for the rite. Bingham, xii. 3. 6.

Tertull. ibid. ch. 7, 8; etc. "Exinde egressi de lavacro perunguimur benedictâ unctione. . . Dehinc manus imponitur, per benedictionem advocans Spiritum sanctum."

and moreover the appellative xpioua, chrism, to be attached to the rite itself in Greek Christendom, as well as its earlier appellative of xeipoleσia, or the laying on of hands. As to that other better known designation of it in after ages throughout Western Latin-speaking Christendom as the rite of confirmation, it seems to have come into use there not till after the end of the fourth century. Perhaps, as Jerom's Latin translation of the New Testament, called the Vulgate, was beginning about that time to come into general circulation in the West, and in those passages in Acts xiv. 22, xv. 32, 41, xviii. 23, which speak of St. Paul's stablishing in the faith the newly formed churches in Pisidia and elsewhere, that Latin version used the verb confirmare, (the origin of confirm in our English version,) Paul's laying on of hands may have been thought of as included in his acts of confirming those Churches; and so the word confirmation been adopted in a ritualistic sense equivalent to chrism; the confirmation meant being that by the gift of the Holy Spirit.* While at the same time these histories in the Acts may also hence have been looked on

* Jerom himself, in his comment on Ps. lxviii. 28, "Strengthen, O Lord, (Lat. confirma,) what thou hast wrought in us," seems thus to apply the word to the Church Confirmation rite; but only as God's act in confirming; "Ut donum baptismi Spiritus sancti effusione Deus confirmet."1-Jerom's is the earliest use of the word that I have seen in this sense: unless the writer called Ambrosiaster, on Heb. vi. 2, may be thought to have preceded Jerom in it; the expression following having been used by him; "Impositio manuum post baptismum, ad confirmationem unitatis in ecclesiâ Christi, à pontificibus fieri solet." 2 Fifty years after Jerom, Pope Leo used the word distinctly of this Church rite; "Invocatione Spiritus sancti per impositionem manuum confirmandi sunt." Hard. i. 1771. Another

1 Similarly was used, about Jerom's time, the corresponding Greek word Beẞalwols in the so called “Apostolic Constitutions," ch. 17, βεβαίωσις της ὁμολογίας. For herein, I think, is meant God's confirmation, at the laying on of hands, of the baptismal covenant, though Bingham (xii. 3. 3) explains it of confirmation on man's part.

2 The earliest Father noted by Bingham as so applying this passage in the Hebrews vi. 2. On which, however, see the notice in my review of Dr. Wordsworth in the Appendix.