as furnishing a corroborative argument for the apostolic institution of the rite; as well as for the apostolic prerogative in its ministration.*

Well, such being the view thus early entertained of the rite itself as the apostolically instituted mean for the gift of the Spirit, and view of bishops as its proper administrators, in their character of successors to the Apostles, the ministration of confirmation by a bishop,or at least, in case of his absence, by some delegated presbyter with chrism consecrated by a bishop,-was appointed to follow immediately, or as soon as possible after, the baptismal rite, as an adjunct of the latter almost indispensable;† and this not in the case of adult baptisms only, but in the then increasingly general case also of infant baptism.

Now, say, how mistaken were all these notions! In the first place, Church bishops could hardly, in any full or proper sense of the word, except in regard of time, be called successors of the Apostles. For both their office example occurs in the Homilies of some Gallican Bishop, contemporary apparently with Cæsarius of Arles, about A.D. 500; Bibl. P. Max. T. vi. 649: another in the Barcelona Council, A.D. 599, Can. 2. Hard. iii. 537. After this, the use of the word became common.

Even to the present day, and by writers of our own Church, the fact of the use of the verb confirm in our English version of these passages in the Acts has, I know, been sometimes argued from in proof of the apostolic institution of Confirmation.

By some of the Fathers the bishop's own laying on of hands, and anointing, is spoken of as essential for the Holy Spirit's communication. But this is to be taken, says Bingham (xii. 3. 7), with reserve; citing Jerom, Adv. Lucif. c. 4, to that effect.

It was in the Greek Church, more frequently, in the Latin Church more rarely, that presbyters were thus specially commissioned by bishops to act for them in the rite of Confirmation. In such cases however, says Bingham, there was an express prohibition of their then using any but episcopally consecrated chrism: for a supply of which presbyters in country districts were required by the 4th Council of Carthage, Ist of Toledo, etc., to apply to their own bishops yearly before Easter. He adds that the bishop's consecration of the oil of chrism was supposed to operate a mystical change in its nature (xii. 2. 1; 3.3). Thus early began the superstitious notions that are still predicated by Romanists respecting the consecrated oil of chrism. See p. 11, Note +, infrà.

and their powers were different and inferior: they being only by Church-appointment heads, in certain limited local districts, of the Christian Church; and with more or less simply of the Holy Spirit's ordinary gifts and influences:-not the apostolic missionaries of Christ's own immediate appointment: with a world-wide Gospelpreaching commission, and regulating power over the so founded Church universal; together with the possession of the Holy Spirit's miraculous as well as ordinary gifts, and power too of imparting even the former, as their credentials of office. Further, in reference to the Samaritan case of the Apostles' laying on of hands, it was for the communication distinctively of those extraordinary or miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost that their intervention was needed by the converts: what are called the Spirit's ordinary or spiritual gifts, such as of saving faith, having been already before vouchsafed, as we read, to those converts through the instrumentality of the deacon Philip's teaching.* Besides that it was not infants on whom the Apostles' hands were thus laid; but adults evidently, whose intelligent faith had already approved itself to Philip.-And, as to that other apostolic act of the confirming of certain of the Asiatic disciples, or Churches, related in Acts xiv., xv., xviii., I have already intimated that it was altogether diverse from that of the laying on of the Apostles' hands just spoken of;- being simply that of strengthening them in the faith by such means as exhortation and prayer, without any laying on at all of the hands, so far as appears in the sacred narrative.+

Overlooking all this, however, the Church authori

So Acts viii. 12. In the ever memorable case of Saul of Tarsus the simple disciple Ananias was made the minister for imparting the Holy Ghost. Acts ix. 17.

† Alike in Acts xiv. 22, xv. 32, 41, xviii. 23, the Greek word is ETTLOTNGIŠOVTES fixing, strengthening, stablishing. In other passages the word βεβαιοω (whence the βεβαιωσις of the Apostolic Constitutions, before cited) is used much in the same sense. I Cor. i. 6. Also ßeßaiwois, Phil. i. 7.

So

ties of the third and fourth centuries laid down, as before said, that, in order to the perfection of the baptismal rite, and due communication to the baptized of the Holy Spirit, there must needs, even in the case of infants, be the adjunct of the rite called chrism, confirmation, or laying on of the bishop's hands. And so, accordingly, forthwith after baptism by a presbyter or deacon, the bishop, if present, was called to lay his hands upon the babe, and anoint him with consecrated oil, the recognised symbol of the Holy Spirit; or, if not present at the time, then as soon after as possible.* Of course, in the case of infants thus confirmed, there could be no intelligent or spiritual acting on their part. Of whatever was done to them they were the mere passive recipients. They were ritually confirmed as the phrase was, but had no power to do anything themselves at the time, in the way of confirming, or ratifying, the vows made for them in baptism. And mark the essentially antichristian+ and superstitious character of the rite so viewed, and so ministered:the bishop, by the mere act (or opus operatum) of laying on of hands, and anointing, being supposed to impart that which it is Christ's own grand and peculiar prerogative to impart, at his own time, and by his own means; viz. the anointing of the soul of man with the saving spiritual influences of the Holy Spirit.§

Well, this unscriptural and superstitious rite of infant Bingham, Bk. xii. 1. 1.

The proper sense of this word, let it be ever remembered, is not professedly opposing, but rather, usurping the functions of, and so more or less superseding, Jesus Christ.

The technical phrase this that was used afterwards by the Tridentine Council, A.D. 1547, (Sess. vii. Canon 8, De Sacramentis,) and so made famous. In P. Paolo's History of the Council of Trent, pp. 223, 247, there is a notice of the discussions on the subject; and of the anathemas then pronounced against all deniers of the virtue of the priestly opus operatum in the sacraments.

§ Ὑμιν (i.e. after baptism) εδόθη χρισμα. . . . τουτο δε εστι το ȧylov пveνμа. Cyril, Cat. Myst. iii. n. 1.-Not so, however, all the early Fathers. Especially Augustine (see his De Trin. xv. 46) spoke not of a giving, but only an invoking of the Holy Spirit in the rite. (See this cited in note, p. 156).

confirmation descended downwards in the Church, alike in the East and in the West,* through the dark middle ages, even as if a recognised apostolic institution, with but little change; save only that in the Latin Church, in the progress of those dark ages, the ceremony of the laying on of hands was sooner or later dropped, and the essence of the rite made to centre in the chrism-anointing. Thus, in England, about the

See the various services "ad consignandos infantes " given in Martene de Rit., vol. i. pp. 92-96.

† Bingham notices this (xii. 3, 6); "The ceremony of imposition of hands is now wholly laid aside in the Romish Church: " but he does not say when the disuse began, Nor does Palmer (ii. 204). Martene, too, (p. 90) seems unable to give any clear account when, and how, this disuse was brought about. Maskell (Ritual. vol. i. Introd. ccxi., etc.) is silent respecting it. The Tridentine Catechism, unable to give any Scriptural or very early patristic warrant for the present thus mutilated Romish ceremony, resorts for authority to notoriously spurious early patristic writings, as of the pseudo-Člement, pseudo-Dionysius, etc. Catech. ii. 3. 3, 4.

In Romish Rituals of the middle age, just as in the Canons of the early Councils of Carthage and Toledo; before noticed (p. 8), it was required that fresh chrism should be made by each bishop every year on Holy Thursday. Martene (Tom. iii. pp. 86-96) gives details from sundry old Rituals of the solemn ceremonial of consecration in the cathedral church on that day:-three ampullæ being brought to the bishop, robed in his pontificals, before the assembled congregation, and surrounded by his priests and deacons ; one ampulla for the oil of baptism, one for that of extreme unction, one (and that sometimes of gold) for sacred chrism:-then the solemn exorcisings of the oil and the chrism; then the benediction by the bishop's three times breathing on it (comp. John xx. 22) in the form of a cross, etc. etc.; then the ampullæ to be taken and laid up in the sacristy. Hence the supply to all the presbyters of the diocese; who were to apply for, and fetch, each one his quota, before Easter day. Maskell (i. 32) gives from the old Sarum Manual the injunctions following respecting the holy oil and chrism:-that the parish priest was never to be without it; that a fresh supply was to be obtained by him from his bishop every Easter week, what might remain of the old being then removed and burnt; and that it was to be kept by him under lock and key, in order to guard against any profane use of it. Any priest that might use old oil for anointing the baptized, was to be deposed from his office.

Still in the middle age, as in the older time of the Apostolic Constitutions, the act of the bishop's consecration, to use Bingham's language, (xii. 3. 3,) "was supposed to work a mystical change in its nature, answerable to the change similarly wrought in the waters

beginning of the eighth century, we are told by Bede that the bishop was wont to make a visitation of his diocese after each solemn season of baptism, for the purpose of confirming (and, thus far, with laying on of hands, as well as anointing) the infant and other (if any other) neophytes.*In the thirteenth century there was in Western Christendom a slight extension of the normal permitted age of confirmation; chiefly with a view to suit the time of the bishop's circuit through his diocese. Thus, for example, in certain Church councils held about that period in what was still_Papal England, viz. at Worcester, at Chichester, at Exeter, and at Salisbury, the law was laid down that parents should bring their children to be confirmed by the ishop within a year, if possible, after birth; or, if not, at least within three or five years. A Durham Synod extended the limit further to seven years. But still in

of baptism, and in the bread and wine in the eucharist."-Just to the same effect the Tridentine Catechism, yet later, (ii. 3. 7-10,) dilates on the virtues of such consecrated chrism.

* Martene, i. 86; also Maskell, Ritual. p. ccxii. ;---" Dum nuper baptizatis, ad accipiendam Spiritùs sancti gratiam, manum imponerit S. Cuthbertus." So too the Ordo Romanus, of the ninth century, given by Bingham, xii. 1, 2, and also Palmer, ibid.-In Mr. Wharton Marriott's lately published book called the Vestiarium Christianum, there is in Plate xxxvii. an interesting sketch, from a Latin MS. of the ninth century, in the library of the S. Minerva at Rome, of a bishop ministering the chrism to a newly baptized babe on its emerging from the font. Here is no sign of the Xeigo@eσia. From the Sarum Constitutions of A.D. 1217, it seems that down to that date the Xeigo@eσia had been retained as an essential part of the rite in England:-"Impositio manûs quæ fit ab episcopo, et confirmatio dicitur." Hard. vii. 92.

I say normal, because necessarily many cases would occur from time to time of adult candidates for confirmation; e.g. in those of adult converts from heathenism. Then there was required confession to the priest, as a preliminary. Martene, ib. p. 88.

Worcester, A.D. 1240, and Chichester, A.D. 1246, within one year; Exeter, A.D. 1287, within three years; Sarum, A.D. 1217, within five years; Durham, a little earlier than Worcester, within seven years. So too the Cologne Council, A.D. 1280.

See Martene, De Rit. T. i. p. 87, et seq. Also Maskell, ibid. p. ccxii. Subsequently to the Reformation, but not till then, the Council