The Order of Confirmation
Or Laying on of Hands upon Those That Are Baptized
and Come to Years of Discretion.

TWO of the rubrics, which relate to this office, are printed at the end of the Catechism, which, till the last review, was rather a part of the order of Confirmation, than an office by itself; it being inserted between the rubrics relating to Confirmation, and the order for the administration of it.

I Rubric 1. The age of persons to be confirmed. The former of these rubrics is, in the first place, concerning the age of the persons to be confirmed, which it determines shall be as soon as children are come to a competent age, and can say, in their mother-tongue, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and also can answer to the other questions of the Catechism. In the primitive Church indeed, such persons as were baptized in the presence of the Bishop, were immediately presented to him in order for Confirmation. Nor was this only true with respect to adult persons, but also with regard to infants, who, if a Bishop was present, were frequently confirmed immediately upon their Baptism; as may be shewed from direct testimonies of the ancients, as well as from that known usage or custom, of giving the holy Eucharist to infants, which ordinarily presupposes their confirmation. The same is practised by the Greek Church to this day. And in our own Church indeed, those who are baptized after they are come to years of discretion, are to be confirmed by the Bishop as soon after their baptism as conveniently may be. But in relation to children, their Confirmation is deferred, and with a great deal of reason, till they come to a competent age, and can say the Catechism. For it being required that at Confirmation they renew the vow that was made for them at their baptism, and ratify the same in their own persons; it is fit they should know and understand the nature of the obligation, before they bind themselves under it. Nor can any detriment arise to a child, by deferring its Confirmation to such an age; because, as our Church has declared, (on purpose to satisfy people that are scrupulous in this very matter,) it is certain by God’s word, that children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved. Their original sin is done away by Baptism, and they are confirmed and secured by death itself from any future guilt; so that no danger can ensue, if their Confirmation be deferred till such time as it can be of use.

Bucer indeed (who generally runs into extremes) finds fault with our Church for administering it too soon; and would have none admitted to this holy rite till such time as they have had an opportunity of giving sufficient testimonies of their faith and desire of living to God by their life and conversation. But we have already shewed, that the enabling persons to give such testimonies of their faith and practice is the end of Confirmation; and therefore surely Confirmation is to be administered, to assist them in manifesting their faith and practice, and not to be deferred till they are already manifested. For this reason it is very evidently the design of our Church, that children be confirmed before they have opportunities of being acquainted with sin; that so the Holy Spirit may take, early possession of their youthful hearts, and prevent those sins to which, without his assistance, the very tenderness of their age would be apt to expose them. It is highly expedient, that those who are confirmed should be old enough to understand the nature and advantages of the rite they are admitted to, and the obligations it lays upon them: and if they are duly apprized of this, they are deemed by our Church qualified enough. For they that are capable of this knowledge, are yet at years to discern between good and evil: and therefore that must be the proper time to secure them, by the invocation of the Spirit, in the paths of virtue. Accordingly, it was declared by the rubric prefixed to the order for Confirmation, in all the Common Prayer Books before the last review, That forasmuch as Confirmation is ministered to them that be baptized, that by imposition of hands and prayer they may receive strength and defence against all temptations to sin, and the assaults of the world and the devil; it is most meet to be ministered when children come to that age, that partly by the frailty of their own flesh, partly by the assaults of the world and the devil, they begin to be in danger to fall into sundry kinds of sin. The reason why this was not continued at the review in 1661, was not because the Church had altered her mind, but because the foregoing part of the rubric was changed into a proper preface, with which the office is now introduced.

§.2. Bishops the only Ministers of Confirmation. The next thing mentioned in this rubric, is the Minister of Confirmation, who, it declares, must be a Bishop; consonant to the first examples we read of it in the Acts, or proceedings of the Apostles themselves. For Peter and John were sent by them from Jerusalem to confirm the Samaritans, though Philip had been there to convert and baptize them: which plainly shews, that the office was beyond a deacon’s province, and limited indeed to the highest order of the Church. For which reason the honour of dispensing this holy ordinance was always reserved to the ministry of Bishops.

I have had occasion indeed to shew that the administering the chrism, or the unction which was used as a part of Confirmation, was often, for certain reasons, allowed to Presbyters. But even in such cases I have observed, that the right of consecrating the unction, and of imposing the hands, were both very strictly reserved to the Bishop. A few instances indeed may be produced of Presbyters, and even Deacons, being allowed to perform this office. But then it was by a special licence or commission from the Bishop, and in cases, for the most part, of some great extremity or danger. Though indeed the allowing this in any case whatever seems very much to run counter to the general practice and sense of the Church, which at all times and places very religiously looked upon the imposition of hands, as the peculiar and incommunicable prerogative of Bishops.

Who ought therefore to do it often. But then as the Bishops have the sole honour, so have they also the whole charge of this institution. And since it must be wholly omitted, if they do not perform it, the Church hath enjoined the frequent administration of it by those reverend fathers. In former ages (as our Church declares) this holy action has been acctistomed to be performed in the Bishop’s Visitation every third year: for which reason she wills and appoints, that every Bishop or his Suffragan, in his accustomed Visitation, do in his own person carefully observe the said custom. And if in that year, by reason of some infirmity, he be not able personally to visit, then he shall not omit the execution of that ditty of Confirmation the next year after, as he may conveniently: though the Reformatio Legum (as cited by Bishop Gibson) seems to appoint, that Confirmation be administered every year.

§.3. A godfather or godmother necessary at Confirmation. The remaining part of this rubric is concerning the godfather or godmother, which every one that is confirmed is obliged to have as a witness of their confirmation. Dr. Nichols tells us that “our wise reformers, because there was not the like reason for them as there was before the Reformation, and because it gave the parents an unnecessary trouble in procuring them, have laid that usage aside.” But one would wonder how the doctor should be so much mistaken, immediately after he must have printed and corrected this very rubric; and at the same time that, to account for the alteration, he cites the rubric immediately following. Nor can any reason be given, why the doctor should so freely charge the providing these godfathers as an unnecessary trouble. They are certainly as useful at the confirmation of a youth, as they are at the baptism of a person that is adult. In both cases they are witnesses of the engagements, which the persons so baptized or confirmed lay themselves under; and consequently, will be proper and continual monitors to check or reclaim them, should they at any time hereafter be tempted to abandon the interest of Christ, and take part with his enemies. And for the prevention of any one’s entering upon this trust, who will not be careful to discharge the duty of it, the Church provides, that no person be admitted godfather or godmother to any Child at Christening or Confirmation before the said person so undertaking hath received the holy Communion?

II. The Minister to prepare his parishioners for Confirmation. The next rubric relates to the care which the Curate of every parish is to use preparatory to Confirmation, who, whensoever the Bishop shall give knowledge for children to be brought unto him for their Confirmation, is either to bring or send in writing, with his hand subscribed thereunto, the names of all such persons within his parish, as he shall think fit to be presented to the Bishop to be confirmed. And by the sixty-first canon he is further enjoined to use his best endeavour to prepare and make able, and likewise to procure as many as he can, to be then brought; though he is also to take especial care that none be presented, but such as can render an account of their faiths according to the Catechism. When they are brought, if the Bishop approve of them, he is to confirm them in, manner following.

I. The first rubric and preface. Upon the day appointed, all that are to be then confirmed, being placed and standing in order before the Bishop, he (or some other Minister appointed by him) is to read the preface, with which the office begins, and which, as I have already hinted, was only a rubric in all the old Common Prayer Books; but at the last review was changed into a preface, to be directed to those that shall offer themselves to be confirmed; that so the Church might be sure they are apprized of the qualifications that are requisite to this holy ordinance, and of the solemn engagements under which they are going to enter themselves by it.

II. The question and answer. The end of Confirmation being thus made known, the Bishop in the next place, by a solemn question, (which was added at the last review,) demands of the candidates an assurance that they will comply with it: asking them, in the presence of God and the congregation, whether they will renew their baptismal vow, and ratify the same in their own persons, &c. To this every one to be confirmed, as a token of his assent, is audibly to answer, I do.

III. The versicles and responses. After this follow two or three short versicles or responses betwixt the Bishop and the congregation, with which the order of Confirmation in all the old Common Prayer Books used to begin. They are a proper preparation to the following solemnity, are often used in ancient Liturgies, and are taken out of the Book of Psalms: though the last of them has been varied since the first book of king Edward, in which, in the room of it, was the usual salutation of, The Lord be with you: And with thy spirit.

IV. The Collect. The Bishop and people having thus joined their requests, the Bishop, in the next place, proceeds alone to collect their petitions into a continued form; in which he prays that God, who had vouchsafed to regenerate the persons who now come to be confirmed, by Water and the Holy Ghost, and had given unto them forgiveness of all their sins, would now strengthen them with the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and daily increase in them the gifts of grace, viz. the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are transcribed into this prayer from the old Greek and Latin translations of Isaiah 11:2, and which were repeated in the very same words in the office of Confirmation, as long ago as St. Ambrose’s time: from whence, and the Greek Liturgy, this whole prayer is almost verbatim transcribed.

Imposition of hands an essential rite in Confirmation. THE preparatory part of this office being now finished, and all of them in order kneeling before the Bishop, (which is a suitable posture for those that are to receive so great a blessing,) the Bishop is to lay his hand upon the head of every one severally. This is one of the most ancient ceremonies in the world; and has always been used to determine the blessing pronounced to those particular persons on whom the hands are laid; and to import that the persons, who thus lay on their hands, act and bless by divine authority. Thus Jacob blessed Ephraim and Manasses, not as a parent only, but as a prophet: Moses laid his hands on Joshua, by express command from God, and as supreme Minister over his people: and thus our blessed Lord, whilst in the state of humiliation, laid his hands upon little children, and those that were sick with divers diseases, to bless and heal them. When indeed our Saviour gave the Spirit to his Apostles just before his ascension, he acted by a power paramount and inherent. He gave of his own, and therefore dispensed it with authority; for he breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. But now this would have been absurd in any that acted by appointment or delegation: and the Apostles, from so ancient a custom and universal a practice, continued the rite of imposition of hands for communicating the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, which was so constantly and regularly observed by them, that St. Paul calls the whole office laying on of hands; a name which is usually retained amongst the Latin Fathers; Confirmation being never administered for many centuries afterwards, in any part of the Church, without this ceremony.

A blow on the cheek used instead of it by the Church of Rome. It was the custom indeed, in some places, for the Bishop to lay both his hands across upon the head of the party confirmed, in allusion to our Saviou’s death upon the Cross, in whom we believe, and from whom we receive the Holy Ghost. But in no Church whatever was the imposition of hands omitted or discontinued till the Church of Home of late years laid it aside, and now uses in the stead of it to give the person confirmed a little blow on the cheek, to remind him that for the future he must be prepared to undergo any injury or affront for the name of Jesus. But, notwithstanding this, the Romanists themselves seem to be apprehensive, that imposition of hands is essential to this office. For whenever they are charged with laying it aside, they endeavour to defend themselves by pleading, that hands are imposed, when the person is hit on the cheek, or when the ointment is applied to him. But every body must see through the ridiculousness of this, since the hands are no otherwise concerned in either of these ceremonies, than as they cannot be performed without them. For this reason our Church, at the Reformation, wisely discontinued the blow on the cheek, and restored the ancient and apostolical use of laying on of hands.

§.2. Prayer another essential to Confirmation. But though the laying on of hands is a token that the Bishops act in this office by divine authority; yet at the same time, they sue to heaven for the blessing they bestow, in humble acknowledgment that the precious gifts hereby conferred are not the effect of their own power and holiness, but of the abundant mercy and favour of Him who is the only fountain of all goodness and grace. Under a due sense of this, even the Apostles themselves, when they laid their hands upon the Samaritans, prayed that they might receive the Holy Ghost. And after their example do their successors with us pray, that the person on whom they lay their hands may be defended with the heavenly grace of God, and continue his for every and daily increase in his holy Spirit more and more, until he come into his everlasting kingdom. Amen.

This form indeed is very different from what was appointed to be used by the first book of king Edward VI., in which immediately after the prayer, beginning. Almighty and everlasting God, the Minister was to use the following words:

Sign them, Lord, and mark them to be thine for ever, by the virtue of thy holy Cross and Passion, Confirm and strengthen them with the inward Unction of the Holy Ghost, mercifully unto everlasting life. Amen.

Then the Bishop was to cross them on the forehead, and lay his hand upon their heads, saying,

N. I sign thee with the sign of the Cross, and lay mine hand upon thee; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

These forms were certainly much more conformable to those that were used in the primitive Church, than that which we have now. What was the occasion of changing them, I do not find: though it is probable the first might be laid aside, because it referred to the ancient ceremony of anointing, which was discontinued at the Reformation, except the Unction, that was ordered by the first Liturgy to be used at Baptism, was accounted preparatory to Confirmation, which I have already shewed to be not unlikely. But however, in the second book of king Edward, the ceremony of anointing was thrown entirely aside, even out of the office of Baptism: and therefore it is probable they threw out this form at the same time, which indeed, if it had continued after the Unction was totally removed, would only have looked like the ruins of an ancient superstructure.

§.3. The use of Unction in Confirmation primitive and catholic. It must indeed be owned in behalf of this ceremony, that it was very ancient and very significant. Some contend that it was practised by the Apostles, and interpret the texts of Scripture referred to in the margin, of a material unction administered in Confirmation. But those texts have been better judged to mean a spiritual unction of the Holy Ghost, by which persons were in those days anointed or consecrated to the office of the ministry. However, it is certain, that within a very few years after the Apostles, the holy Fathers used to apply Oil and Balm to those that were confirmed, as an external sign of this inward unction of the Holy Spirit, and to represent the Baptism of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost with fire, of which oil we know is the properest material. Theophilus Antiochenus, who lived and flourished within seventy years of the Apostle St. John, and many others of the ancientest Fathers, speak of it as a rite long established and used; insomuch that it is to discover from them, whether it was of apostohcal practice or not. I need not shew that the use of it was continued in all parts of the Church, through every century, quite down to the Reformation: for this may he gathered from the very names by which they have always chose to distinguish this office, viz. the Anointing or Chrism, the same name which the Greek Church also uses for it till this day, as keeping religiously to the primitive usage.

§.4. As also the sign of the Cross. Another ancient ceremony retained by our Church at the first Reformation, (as appears by the rubric which I have cited above,) was the sign of the Cross. This was used (as I have already observed) by the primitive Christians, upon all occasions; and therefore we may assure ourselves, they would not omit it in so solemn an action as in that of Confirmation. Tertullian is clear for the use of it in his time; and in after-ages testimonies are so numerous, that it is endless to cite them. I shall therefore only observe, that the name Consignation (which was another name by which, it is well known, the Latin writers distinguish Confirmation) seems to have taken its rise from this ceremony of signing the person, at the time of Confirmation, with the sign of the Cross. And from hence too, it is probable, it is sometimes called Σφραγὶς by the Greeks, a name which they generally use to denote the sign of the Cross.

But now neither this nor the unction having any text of Scripture that is clear on their side; and since it cannot be made to appear that either of them was practised or used by the Apostles; we may reasonably suppose that they were taken up at first by the authority and discretion of every Church for itself; and that therefore every Church has liberty, as to herself, to lay them aside, since nothing appears essential to the office, but what we find the Apostles used, viz. Prayer accompanied with Imposition of Hands.

I. The Versicles and Lord's Prayer. AFTER the persons were all confirmed, it was usual for the Bishop, in the primitive Church, to salute them with peace, to denote that peace (both temporal and eternal) was the happy fruit of the Holy Ghost conferred and received in this solemnity. Accordingly, in king Edward’s first Common Prayer Book, the Bishop, immediately after he had laid his hands upon all that were brought and presented to him, was to say. The peace of the Lord abide with you: to which the answer returned was, And with thy spirit. What offence this was capable of giving I cannot discover; but it is certain that it was thrown out when Bucer revised it: though at the last review, soon after the Restoration, the usual salutation of, The Lord be with you, And with thy spirit, was added in the room of it, together with, Let us pray, and the Lord’s Prayer, which should not be left out of any office, especially where it comes in so properly; and therefore (all kneeling down) the Bishop is here directed to add it.

IV. The blessing. A blessing concludes all offices; and therefore one ought more especially to end this, it being as it were an epitome of the whole administration, which is but one continued and solemn benediction.

The Rubric. After all is added a rubric, that none he admitted to the holy Communion, until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed. This is exactly conformable to the practice of the primitive Church, which always ordered that Confirmation should precede the Eucharist, except there was extraordinary cause to the contrary: such as was the case of clinick baptism, of the absence of a Bishop, or the like; in which cases the Eucharist is allowed before Confirmation. The like provision (as I have already observed) is made by our own provincial Constitutions, as well as the rubric which is now before us, which admit none to communicate, unless in danger of death, but such as are confirmed, or at least have a reasonable impediment for not being confirmed. And the glossary allows no impediment to be reasonable, but the want of a Bishop near the place.