will be found, I believe, on perusal of these notices, that alike the "Churchman" and the "Guardian" have only added strength, however unintentionally, to the truth and propriety of the views of our English Church Rite of Confirmation that are propounded in these Lectures.* E. B. E. Brighton, November, 1866. The present or third Edition is published in a smaller and cheaper form, agreeably with the requests strongly expressed to me by many valued clerical friends, and with a view to the book's wider circulation. The Edition has been carefully revised; and here and there, it is hoped, especially in the first very important and elaborate Lecture, improved. As regards one Paper that was inserted in the Appendix to the Second Edition,-viz., my reply to the "Guardian,"-it has seemed to me not worth the while to reprint it at full, or do more than give a very brief notice of it; the Critic having offered no argument, nor attempted any refutation of the historic facts asserted by me, in justification of his dogmatic condemnatory judgment on the Lectures. Brighton, April, 1869. CONTENTS. PAGE REFORMED CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S VIEW OF CONFIRMATION, CONFIRMATION LECTURES. LECTURE I. ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S VIEW OF THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. WE are met together to-day, dear young friends, and propose meeting here again each Wednesday, through the five or six ensuing weeks, on business very interesting, and at the same time very solemn. It is with a view to your better preparation for that ordinance of Confirmation, at which, in effect, you are purposing publicly and deliberately to express you desire and resolution to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. The ordinance is one, as appointed by our Church, which, the more I think of it, the more approves itself to my mind as both reasonable and Scriptural. May the Lord Himself then bless the public instructions here given in preparation for it! May He bless also our more private preparatory readings in Bible-classes together, and your own personal meditations and prayers in reference to it, for his great Name's sake! I said that the ordinance approved itself to my mind as both reasonable and Scriptural, when considered Z 1 I distinctively in the light of its appointment by our own Reformed Protestant Church. For there are some very notable peculiarities in the view that our Church propounds of it, as compared with the view propounded of it by certain other Churches. They are stated, or implied, in three or four characteristic particulars of expression in the Prefatory Address at the commencement of the Confirmation Service in our Prayer Book;—a Preface peculiar, it is said, to the English Church :* and which, as involving matter of great importance, I intend to take it as it were for my text in the present preliminary Lecture. The rather do I feel it my duty thus early to direct your careful consideration to them, because, although so important, they have been hitherto, I believe, almost altogether overlooked. At least such is the case in whatever published Manuals of preparation for Confirmation have come under my own notice. Let me read the Preface. "To the end that confirmation may be ministered to the more edifying of such as shall receive it, the Church hath thought good to order that none hereafter shall be confirmed but such as can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments; and can answer also to such other Questions as in the Short Catechism are contained. Which order is very convenient to be observed: to the end that children, being now come to the years of discretion, and having learned what their Godfathers and Godmothers promised for them in Baptism, they may themselves, with their own mouth and consent, openly before the Church ratify and confirm the same; and also promise that by the grace of God they will evermore endeavour themselves faithfully to observe such things, as they by their own confession have assented unto." Observe then here, first, that the words confirm and confirming are in this prefatory statement applied actively, though indeed in different senses of the verb, just as expressly to the candidates as to the bishop. The candidates, it is explained, have in this ordinance to confirm, in the sense of ratifying, the vows made for them by their sponsors at baptism: while the bishop, by invoking God's blessing on them, conjointly with So Palmer, Orig. Liturg. vol. ii. p. 205. |