A

DISCOURSE

OF

CONFIRMATION.

THE INTRODUCTION.

NEXT to the incarnation of the Son of God, and the whole economy of our redemption wrought by him in an admirable order and conjugation of glorious mercies, the greatest thing that ever God did to the world, is the giving to us the Holy Ghost and possibly this is the consummation and perfection of the other. For in the work of redemption Christ indeed made a new world; we are wholly a new creation, and we must be so: and therefore when St. John began the narrative of the Gospel, he began in a manner and style very like to Moses in his history of the first creation; " In the beginning was the Word" &c. "All things were made by him; and without him, was not any thing made, that was made." But as in the creation the matter was first (there were indeed heavens, and earth, and waters; but all this was rude and without form,' till the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters),' so it is in the new creation. We are a new mass, redeemed with the blood of Christ, rescued from an evil portion, and made candidates of heaven and immortality; but we are but an embryo in the regeneration, until the Spirit of God enlivens us and moves again upon the waters: and then every subsequent motion and operation is from the Spirit of God. "We cannot say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." By him we live, in him we walk, by his aid we pray, by his emotions we desire: we breathe, and sigh, and groan, by him: he helps us in all our infirmities,' and he gives us all our strengths; he reveals mysteries to us, and teaches us all our duties; he

(as will appear by enumeration of the many and great blessings consequent to it), I am not without hope, that it may be a service acceptable to God, and a useful ministry to the souls of my charges, if by instructing them that know not, and exhorting them that know, I set forward the practice of this holy rite, and give reasons why the people ought to love it and to desire it, and how they are to understand and practise it, and consequently, with what duteous affections they are to relate to those persons, whom God hath in so special and signal manner made to be, for their good and eternal benefit, the ministers of the Spirit and salvation.

St. Bernard in the life of St. Malachias, my predecessor in the see of Down and Connor, reports that it was the care of that good prelate to renew the rite of confirmation in his diocess, where it had been long neglected and gone into desuetude. It being too much our case in Ireland, I find the same necessity, and am obliged to the same procedure, for the same reason, and in pursuance of so excellent an example: "Hoc enim est evangelizare Christum (said St. Austin), non tantùm docere quæ sunt dicenda de Christo, sed etiam quæ observanda ei, qui accedit ad compagem corporis Christi ;" ;""For this is to preach the Gospel, not only to teach those things which are to be said of Christ, but those also which are to be observed by every one who desires to be confederated into the society of the body of Christ," which is his church: that is, not only the doctrines of good life, but the mysteries of godliness, and the rituals of religion, which issue from a divine fountain, are to be declared by him who would fully preach the Gospel.

In order to which performance I shall declare,

1. The divine original, warranty, and institution, of the holy rite of confirmation.

2. That this rite was to be a perpetual and never-ceasing ministration.

3. That it was actually continued and practised by all the succeeding ages of the purest and primitive churches.

4. That this rite was appropriate to the ministry of bishops.

5. That prayer and imposition of the bishops' hands did make the whole ritual; and though other things were added,

Cap. 9. de Fide etOperibus,

yet they were not necessary, or any thing of the insti

tution.

6. That many great graces and blessings were consequent to the worthy reception and due ministration of it.

7. I shall add something of the manner of preparation to it, and reception of it.

SECTION I.

Of the divine Original, Warranty, and Institution, of the holy Rite of Confirmation.

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In the church of Rome, they have determined confirmation to be a sacrament, proprii nominis,' proper and really; and yet their doctors have, some of them at least, been ‘paulô iniquiores,'' a little unequal and unjust' to their proposition; insomuch that from themselves we have had the greatest opposition in this article. Bonacina and Henriquez allow the proposition, but make the sacrament to be so unnecessary, that a little excuse may justify the omission and almost neglect of it. And Loemilius and Daniel à Jesu, and generally the English Jesuits, have, to serve some ends of their own family and order, disputed it almost into contempt, that by representing it as unnecessary, they might do all the ministries ecclesiastical in England without the assistance of bishops their superiors, whom they therefore love not, because they are so. But the theological faculty of Paris have condemned their doctrine as temerarious, and savouring of heresy; and in the later schools have approved rather the doctrine of Gamachæus, Estius, Kellison, and Bellarmine, who indeed do follow the doctrine of the most eminent persons in the ancient school, Richard of Armagh, Scotus, Hugo Cavalli, and Gerson the learned chancellor of Paris; who following the old Roman order, Amalarius and Albinus, do all teach confirmation to be of great and pious use, of divine original, and to many purposes necessary, according to the doctrine of Scriptures and the primitive church.

Whether confirmation be a sacrament or no, is of no use to dispute; and if it be disputed, it can never be proved to ! De Sacram. disp. 3. q. Unit. Punct. 3. 2. lib. 3. de Sacram.

be so as baptism and the Lord's supper, that is "as generally necessary to salvation:" but though it be no sacrament, it cannot follow that it is not of very great use and holiness: and as a man is never the less tied to repentance, though it be no sacrament; so neither is he nevertheless obliged to receive confirmation, though it be (as it ought) acknowledged to be of a use and nature inferior to the two sacraments of divine, direct, and immediate institution. It is certain that the fathers, in a large, symbolical, and general sense, call it a sacrament;' but mean not the same thing by that word when they apply it to confirmation, as they do when they apply it to baptism and the Lord's supper. That it is an excellent and divine ordinance to purposes spiritual, that it comes from God, and ministers in our way to God, that is all we are concerned to inquire after: and this I shall endeavour to prove not only against the Jesuits, but against all opponents of what side soever.

My first argument from Scripture is what I learn from Optatus and St. Cyril. Optatus writing against the Donatists hath these words: "Christ descended into the water,not that in him, who is God, was any thing that could be made cleaner, but that the water was to precede the future unction, for the initiating and ordaining and fulfilling the mysteries of baptism. He was washed, when he was in the hands of John; then followed the order of the mystery, and the Father finished what the Son did ask, and what the Holy Ghost declared: the heavens were opened, God the Father anointed him, the spiritual unction presently descended in the likeness of a dove, and sat upon his head, and was spread all over him, and he was called 'the Christ,' when he was 'the anointed of the Father.' To whom also, lest imposition of hands should seem to be wanting, the voice of God was heard from the cloud, saying, This is my Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him.""-That which Optatus says is this ; that, upon and in Christ's person, baptism, confirmation, and ordination, were consecrated and first appointed. He was baptized by St. John; he was confirmed by the Holy Spirit, and anointed with spiritual unction in order to that great work of obedience to his Father's will; and he was consecrated by the voice of God from heaven. In all things Christ is the head, and the first-fruits: and in these things was the

fountain of the sacraments and spiritual grace, and the great exemplar of the economy of the church. For Christ was • nullius pœnitentiæ debitor:' baptism of repentance was not necessary to him, who never sinned; but so it became him to fulfil all righteousness, and to be a pattern to us all. But we have need of these things, though he had not; and in the same way in which salvation was wrought by him for himself and for us all, in the same way he intended we should walk. He was baptized, because his Father appointed it so: we must be baptized, because Christ hath appointed it, and we have need of it too. He was consecrated to be the great prophet and the great priest, because no man takes on him this honour, but he that was called of God, as was Aaron :' and all they who are to minister in his prophetical office under him, must be consecrated and solemnly set apart for that ministration, and after his glorious example. He was anointed with a spiritual unction from above after his baptism; for after Jesus was baptized,' he ascended up from the waters, and then the Holy Ghost descended upon him. It is true, he received the fulness of the spirit; but we receive him by measure; but "of his fulness we all receive, grace for grace:" that is, all that he received in order to his great work, all that in kind, one for another, grace for grace, we are to receive according to our measures and our necessities. And as all these he received by external ministrations; so must we: God the Father appointed his way, and he, by his example first, hath appointed the same to us; that we also may follow him in the regeneration, and work out our salvation by the same graces in the like solemnities. For if he needed them for himself, then we need them much more. If he did not need them for himself, he needed them for us, and for our example, that we might follow his steps, who, by receiving these exterior solemnities and inward graces, became "the author and finisher of our salvation," and the great example of his church.-I shall not need to make use of the fancy of the Murcosians and Colobarsians, who turning all mysteries into numbers, reckoned the numeral letters of WEρIOTEρa, and made them coincident to the x and w; but they intended to say, that Christ, receiving the holy dove after his baptism, became all in all to us, the beginning and the per

s 1 John, ii. 8.

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