_THE APOSTLES AND CONFIRMATION._
"Now when the Apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria
had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:
who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might
receive the Holy Ghost: for as yet He was fallen upon none of
them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord
Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the
Holy Ghost."--ACTS viii. 14-18.
In the last lecture we noticed the work of Philip in Samaria, the
present one will deal with the mission of the Apostles Peter and John
to complete and perfect that work.
The story, as told in the sacred narrative, is full of instruction. It
reveals the ritual of the apostolic Church, the development of its
organization and practice, the spiritual lessons which the earliest
gospel teachers imparted and the latest gospel teachers will find
applicable. Philip converted the Samaritans and laid the basis of a
Christian Church. Word was at once brought of this new departure to
the Apostles at Jerusalem, because it was a new step, a fresh
development which must have given a great shock to the strict Jewish
feeling, which regarded the gospel as limited by the bounds of
orthodox Judaism. The Apostles may have felt some surprise at the
news, but they evidently must have acknowledged the Samaritans as
standing on a higher level than the Gentiles, for they do not seem to
have raised any such objections to their baptism as were afterwards
urged against St. Peter when he preached to and baptized Cornelius.
"Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised," was the objection of the
Jerusalem Church urged against St. Peter as regards Cornelius. The
Samaritans were circumcised, and therefore this objection did not
apply. The Jews, indeed, of Judæa and of Galilee hated the Samaritans
with a perfect hatred, but neither hatred nor love is ever guided by
reason. Our feelings always outrun our judgment, and the judgment of
the Jews compelled them to recognise the Samaritans as within the
bounds of circumcision, and therefore the Apostles tolerated, or at
least did not except against, the preaching of the gospel to the
Samaritans, and their admission by baptism into the Messianic kingdom.
It is a phenomenon we often see repeated in our own experience. A
brother or a relation alienated is harder to be won and is more
bitterly regarded than a total stranger with whom we may have
quarrelled, though, at the same time, reason, perhaps even pride and
self-respect and regard for consistency, compel us to recognise that
he occupies a different position from that of a perfect stranger. The
conversion of the Samaritans must be viewed as one of the
divinely-appointed steps in the plan of human unification, one of the
divinely-appointed actions gently leading to the final overthrow of
the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile which the earlier
chapters of this book trace for us. How beautiful the order, how
steady and regular the progress, that is set before us! First we have
the call of the strict Jews, then that of the Hellenistic Jews, next
that of the Samaritans, and then the step was not a long one from the
admission of the hated Samaritans to the baptism of the devout though
uncircumcised Gentile, Cornelius. God does His work in grace, as in
nature, by degrees. He teaches us that changes must come, and that
each age of the Church must be marked by development and improvement;
but He shows us here in His word how changes should be made,--not
rashly, unwisely, impetuously, and therefore uncharitably, but gently,
gradually, sympathetically, and with explanations abundantly
vouchsafed to soothe the feelings and calm the fears of the weaker
brethren. This method of the Divine government receives an
illustration in this passage. God led the Church of the first age very
gradually, and therefore we see the apostolic college steadily, though
perhaps blindly and unconsciously, advancing on the road of progress
and of Christian liberality.
We have in this section of primitive Church history a two-fold
division: the action of the Apostles on one side, the attitude and
conduct of Simon Magus on the other. Each division has quite distinct
teaching. Let us in this chapter take note of the Apostles.
I. The Apostles who were at Jerusalem heard of the conversion of
Samaria, and they at once sent thither Peter and John to supervise the
work. The deacons had, for a time, appeared to supersede the Apostles
before the world, but only in appearance. The Apostles retained the
chief government in their own hands, though to the men of the time
others seemed the more prominent workers. The Apostles gave free scope
to the gifts entrusted to their brilliant subordinates, but none the
less they felt their own responsibility as rulers of the Divine
society, and never for a moment did they relinquish the authority over
that society which God had entrusted to them. They felt that Christ
had instituted an organized society with ranks and offices duly
graduated, with officials--of whom they were themselves the
chief--assigned to their appointed tasks, and never did they surrender
to any man their divinely-given power and authority. Philip might
preach in Samaria; but though he was successful in winning converts,
the Apostles claimed the right of inspecting and controlling his
labours. They successfully solved a problem which has often proved a
very troublesome one. They combined the exercise of power with the
free play of enthusiasm, and the result was that the enthusiasm was
shielded from mistakes, and the power was vivified by the touch of
enthusiasm and prevented from falling into that cold, heartless,
ice-like thing which autocratic rule, in Church and State alike, has
so often become. What a picture and guide we here behold for the
Church of all ages! What a needed lesson is here taught! What errors
and schisms would have been avoided throughout the long ages which
have since elapsed, had the example of the apostolic Church been more
closely followed, had power been more sympathetic with enthusiasm, and
enthusiasm more loving, obedient, and submissive as regards authority!
The Apostles recognised their own responsibility and acted upon their
own sense of authority, and they sent forth Peter and John to minister
in Samaria and supply what was wanting as soon as they heard of the
work done by St. Philip. The persons whom the college of Apostles thus
despatched are worthy of notice, and have a direct bearing on some of
the great theological and social problems of this age. They sent Peter
and John. Peter, then, was the messenger of the Apostles,--the sent
one, not the sender. We can find nothing of the supremacy of Peter in
these early apostolic days of which men began to dream in later years.
The supreme authority in the Church and the burden of the Christian
ministry were laid upon the twelve Apostles as a whole, and they, as a
body of men entrusted with co-equal power, exercised their functions.
They knew nothing of Peter as the prince of the Apostles; nay, rather,
when occasion demanded, they sent Peter as well as John as their
delegates. The choice of these two men, just as their previous
activity, depended again upon spiritual grounds, upon their love,
their zeal, their Christian experience, not upon any official
privilege or position which they enjoyed above the other Apostles.
Surely in this view again the Acts of the Apostles may be regarded as
a mirror of all Church history. The pretended supremacy of St. Peter
above his brethren has been the ground on which the claim of Roman
supremacy over all other Christian Churches has been urged. That claim
has been backed up by forgeries like the False Decretals, where
fictitious letters of Popes dating from the first century downwards
have been used to support the papal assertions. But plain men need not
go into abstruse questions of Church history, or into debates upon
disputed texts. We have one undoubted Church history, admitted by all
parties who profess and call themselves Christians. That history is
the Acts of the Apostles, and when we examine it we can find nothing
about St. Peter, his life or his actions, answering in the remotest
degree to that imperial and absolute authority which the papacy claims
in virtue of its alleged descent from that holy Apostle. The Acts
knows of St. Peter sometimes as the leader and spokesman of the
Apostles, at other times as their delegate, but the Acts knows
nothing and hints nothing of St. Peter as the ruler, the prince, the
absolute, infallible guide of his fellow Apostles and of the whole
Church.
Peter and John were the persons despatched as the apostolic delegates
to complete the work begun by Philip. We can see spiritual reasons
which may have led to this choice. Peter and John, with James his
brother, had been specially favoured with Christ's personal
communications, they had been admitted into His most intimate
friendship, and therefore they were spiritually eminent in the work of
Christ, and peculiarly fitted to do work like that which awaited them
in Samaria,--pointing Christian men to the great truth, that eminence
in Christ's Church and cause will evermore depend, not upon official
position or hierarchical or ministerial authority, but upon spiritual
qualifications and the vigour of the interior life. How wonderfully
has the prophecy involved in the pre-eminence of Peter, James, and
John been fulfilled. When we look back over the ages of Christian
labour which have since elapsed, whose are the foremost names? Whose
fame as Christian workers is the greatest? Not popes or princes, or
bishops of great cities, but an Augustine, the bishop of an obscure
African see; an Origen, a presbyter of Alexandria; a Thomas à Kempis
whom no man knows; or presbyters like John Wesley, or George Herbert,
or Fletcher of Madeley, or John Keble;--men like them, holy and humble
of heart, obscure in station or in scenes of labour, they have lived
much with God and they have gained highest places in the saintly army,
because they were specially the friends of Jesus Christ. The world
knew nothing of them, and the men of affairs and the children of time,
whose thoughts were upon rank, and place, and titles, knew nothing of
them; and such men had their reward perhaps, they gained what they
sought; but the despised ones of the past have had their reward as
well, for their names have now become as ointment poured forth, whose
sweet fragrance has filled the whole house of the Lord.
II. And now why were Peter and John sent to Samaria from Jerusalem?
They were doubtless sent to inspect the work, and see whether the
apostolic approval could be given to the step of evangelizing the
Samaritans. They had to form a judgment upon it; for no matter how
highly we may rate the inspiration of the Apostles, it is clear that
they had to argue, debate, think, and balance one side against another
just like other people. The inspiration they enjoyed did not save them
the trouble of thinking and the consequent danger of disputation; it
did not force them to adopt a view, else why the debates we read of
concerning the baptism of Cornelius, or the binding character of
circumcision? It is clear, from the simple fact that controversy and
debate held a prominent place in the early Christian Church, that
there was no belief in the existence of infallible guides, local and
visible, whose autocratic decisions were final and irreversible,
binding the whole Church. It was then believed that the guidance of
the Holy Spirit was vouchsafed through the channel of free discussion
and interchange of opinion, guided and sanctified by prayer. Peter and
John had to go down to Samaria and keenly scrutinize the work, so as
to see whether it bore the marks of Divine approval, completing the
work by the imposition of their hands and prayer for the gifts of the
Holy Ghost. The Apostles duly discharged their mission, and by their
ministry the converts received the gift of the Holy Spirit, together
with some or all of those external signs and manifestations which
accompanied the original blessing on the day of Pentecost at
Jerusalem. This portion of our narrative has been always regarded by
the Church, whether in the East or the West, as its authority for the
practice of the rite of confirmation. The assertion of the Church of
England, in one of the collects appointed for use by the bishop in the
Confirmation Service, may be taken as expressing on this point the
opinion of the Churches--Roman, Greek, and Anglican. "Almighty and
everliving God, who makest us both to will and to do those things that
be good and acceptable unto Thy Divine Majesty; We make our humble
supplications unto Thee for these Thy servants, upon whom (after the
example of Thy holy Apostles) we have now laid our hands, to certify
them (by this sign) of Thy favour and gracious goodness towards them."
Let us reflect for a little on these words. The reference to apostolic
example in this collect is not, indeed, merely to this incident at
Samaria. The example of St. Paul at Ephesus, as narrated in the
nineteenth chapter, is also claimed as another case in point. There we
find that St. Paul came to a place where he had previously laboured
for a short time. He discovered in Ephesus some disciples who had
received the imperfect and undeveloped form of teaching which John the
Baptist had communicated. A sect had apparently been already formed to
continue John's teaching, such as we still find perpetuated amid the
wilds of distant Mesopotamia, in the shape of the semi-Christian
society which there practises daily baptism as a portion of its
religion.[148] St. Paul explains to them the richer and fuller
teaching of Christ, commands them to be baptized after the Christian
model, by one of his attendants, and then, like Peter and John,
completes the baptismal act by the imposition of hands and prayer for
the gift of the Spirit. These two apostolic incidents are not,
however, the only scriptural grounds which can be alleged for the
continued use of confirmation. It might be said that the practice of
the Apostles was not sufficient to justify or authorize confirmation
as a scriptural rite, unless it can be shown that the imposition of
hands, after baptism and as its completion, passed into the ordinary
usage of the early Church. Let me here make a brief digression. The
New Testament cannot be used as a guide-book to the whole life and
practice of the early Church, because it was merely a selection from
the writings of the Apostles and of their companions. If we possessed
everything that the Apostles wrote, we doubtless should have
information upon many points of apostolic doctrine and ritual
concerning which we now can only guess, some of which would doubtless
very much surprise us. Thus, to take an example, we should have been
left without one single reference to the Holy Communion in all the
writings of St. Paul, had not the disorders at Corinth led to grave
abuses of that sacrament, and thus caused St. Paul incidentally to
mention the subject in the tenth and eleventh chapters of his first
epistle to that Church.
[148] See about this curious sect of the Hemero-baptists
Lightfoot's _Colossians_, pp. 402-407.
Or to take another case. The _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_ has
been already referred to and described. It is manifestly a manual
dealing with the Church of apostolic times, and there we find
reference to customs which were practised in the Apostolic Church, to
which no reference, or at least very slight reference, is made in the
Epistles or other books of the New Testament. The Apostles practised
fasting as a preparation for important Church actions, as we learn
from the account of the ordination of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch.
The _Teaching of the Apostles_ shows us that this practice, derived
from the Jews, was the rule before baptism (of this we read nothing in
the New Testament), as well as before ordination (of this we do read
something), and that not only by the persons to be baptized, but by
the ministers of baptism as well.[149] It mentions Wednesday and
Friday fasts as instituted in opposition to the Monday and Thursday
fasts of the Jews; it shows us how the lovefeasts of the Primitive
Church were celebrated, and sheds much light upon the Order of
prophets and their activity, to which St. Paul barely alludes. If we
could regain the numberless writings of the Apostles and other early
Christians which have perished, we should doubtless possess
information upon many other practices and customs of early Church life
which would much surprise us. The New Testament cannot then be used as
an exhaustive account of the Primitive Church; its silence is no
conclusive argument against apostolic origin or sanction as regards
any practice, any more than the Old Testament is to be regarded as an
exhaustive history of the Jewish nation. And yet, though we speak
thus, confirmation or laying on of hands upon the baptized as the
completion of the initial sacrament is not left without notice in the
Epistles. The imposition of hands as the complement of baptism did not
cease with the Apostles and was not tied to them alone, any more than
did the use of water in the sacrament of baptism itself cease with the
Apostles, as some of the Society of Friends have contended, or the
imposition of hands in ordination terminate with apostolic times, as
others have argued. This appears from two passages. St. Paul, in the
twenty-second verse of the fifth chapter of 1 Timothy, when dealing
with Timothy's conduct in the usual pastoral oversight of the Church,
lays down, "Lay hands suddenly on no man." These words referred not to
ordination, for St. Paul had passed from that subject and was treating
of Timothy's ministerial conduct towards the ordinary members of his
flock, directing how he was to care for their souls, reproving
publicly the notorious transgressor, and putting him to open shame. We
admit, indeed, at once that this notice of the imposition of hands may
refer to another use of it which was practised in the early Church.
St. Paul may be referring to the imposition of hands when a lapsed or
excommunicated member was readmitted into the Church; or both uses of
the ceremony, in confirmation as well as in absolution, may be
included under the one reference. But in any case we have another
distinct, though incidental, mention of this rite, and that at a time,
in a manner, and in a book which clearly proves the practice to have
passed into the general custom of the Church. Let us see how this is.
[149] The order for adult baptism in the Book of Common Prayer was
drawn up by the divines of the Restoration. They must have been
well skilled in Christian antiquity, for they lay down expressly
the same rule as the _Teaching of the Apostles_. They order that
notice shall be given of an adult's baptism a week at least
beforehand, that the persons to be baptized may be duly exhorted
to prepare themselves by prayer and fasting for that holy
ordinance.
The Epistle to the Hebrews was written by one of the second generation
of Christians, one of the generation who could look back to and wonder
at the miracles and gifts of the apostolic age. The writer of the
Hebrews tells us himself that he was in this position; for when
speaking, in the opening of the second chapter, concerning the danger
of neglecting the Gospel message, he describes it as a "great
salvation; which having at the first been spoken through the Lord, was
confirmed unto us by them that heard; God also bearing witness with
them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts
of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will." So that it is evident
that the Church of the Hebrews was the composition of a man who
belonged to a time when the Church had passed out of the fluid state
in which we find it in the earlier chapters of the Acts. It had passed
into a condition when rites and ceremonies and Church government and
ecclesiastical organisations had crystallised, and when men repeated
with profoundest reverence the forms and ceremonies which had become
associated with the names and persons of the earliest teachers of the
faith; names and persons which now were surrounded with all that
sacred charm and halo which distance, and above all else, death, lend
to human memories. There is an interesting passage in Tertullian which
shows how this feeling worked among the early Christians, making them
anxious in divine worship to repeat most minutely and even absurdly
the circumstances of the Church's earliest days. In Tertullian's works
we have a treatise on Prayer, in which he expounds the nature of the
Lord's Prayer, going through it petition by petition, proving
conclusively that Tertullian and the Christians nearest the apostolic
age knew nothing of that modern absurdity which asserts that the
Lord's Prayer should not be used by Christians. He then proceeds to
explain certain useful customs, and to reprove certain superstitious
ceremonies practised by the Christians of his day. He approves and
explains the custom of praying with hands outstretched, because this
is an imitation of our Lord, whose hands were outstretched upon the
cross.[150] He disapproves of the practice of washing the hands before
every prayer, which Tertullian says was done in memory of our Lord's
Passion, when water was used by Pilate to wash his hands, and
designates as superstitious the custom of sitting down upon their
couches or beds after they had prayed, in imitation of Hermas who
wrote the _Shepherd_, of whom it was said, that after finishing his
prayer, he sat down on his bed.[151] Now this last instance exactly
illustrates what must have happened in the case of the second
generation of Christians, to whom the Epistle to the Hebrews was
directed. Men at the end of the second century, when Tertullian lived,
looked back to the Shepherd of Hermas with the same profound reverence
as to the Apostles. They imitated, therefore, every action and
ceremony practised by the Shepherd, whom they regarded as inspired,
reading his writings with the same reverence as those of the Apostles.
[150] There is no ceremony which proves more conclusively the
identity between the ritual of apostolic ages and, say, of the
year 200, than this custom of standing at public prayer with hands
outstretched. St. Paul, writing to Timothy (1 Tim. ii. 8), says,
"I desire therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up
holy hands," and then he prescribes rules for the women. This
passage will not be understood in its full force till one grasps
the notion of an early Christian at prayer, as described by
Tertullian in the treatise on Prayer to which I have referred.
Tertullian lays down, with other writers of the second century,
that Christians should pray in public on the Lord's Day standing
with the hands lifted up and the arms stretched out horizontally.
On this point the practices of the East and West alike were
identical, and had not changed one atom from St. Paul's to
Tertullian's time. From the way some people speak one would think
that the Christians of the second century were wild
revolutionaries, who were only too anxious to change the ritual
derived from apostolic days. Tertullian's works prove that they
were, on the other hand, almost too slavish in their adherence to
ancient customs. Human nature is the same in every age, and a
moment's reflection will show us that whether in England,
Scotland, or Ireland, the ritual of old-fashioned congregations of
every denomination is the same to-day as in the seventeenth
century. A few instances occur to me which illustrate this. Dean
Hook, in a letter dated April 5th, 1838, tells us that the old
Presbyterian way of administering the Holy Communion, carrying the
elements to the communicants sitting in their pews, still existed
in the parish church of Leeds. The custom had been introduced
early in the seventeenth century, and never was discontinued,
notwithstanding a plain rubric forbidding it. I have read that the
same custom prevailed at St. Mary's in Oxford, when Newman became
Vicar. Again, down to a few years ago, in the country parts of
Ulster and Connaught, the separation between the sexes in public
worship continued among the Methodists, in obedience to John
Wesley's law made one hundred and twenty years before. It is two
hundred years since Sternhold and Hopkins' version of the Psalms
was authoritatively laid aside, and Tate and Brady substituted.
Yet I have within the last ten years seen Prayer-books in use at
Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, with Sternhold and Hopkins attached to
them. Surely the early Christians were at least as Conservative as
their modern followers.
[151] See Tertullian on Prayer, in his Works, vol. i., pp. 188-92,
as translated in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library.
Human nature is ever the same. The latest sect started in the present
generation will be found acting on the same principles as the
Christians of the apostolic age. The practices and ceremonial of their
first founders become the model on which they shape themselves, and
every departure from that model is bitterly resented. Human nature is
governed universally by principles which are essentially conservative
and traditional.[152] So it must have been with the immediate
followers of the Apostles; they conformed themselves as exactly as
they could to everything--rite, ceremony, form of words--which the
Apostles delivered or practised. And the Apostles certainly delivered
precepts and laid down rules on various liturgical questions, of which
we have now no written record. St. Paul expressly refers to traditions
and customs which he had delivered or intended to deliver, some of
which we know, others of which we know not.[153] Now wherefore have we
made this long excursion into the dim regions of primitive antiquity?
Simply to show that it is _à priori_ likely that the writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and men like him of the second and third
generation of Christians, would have followed the example of the
Apostles, and practised imposition of hands together with prayer for
the gift of the Spirit in the case of those baptized into Christ,
merely because the Apostles had beforetime practised it. And then,
when we come to the actual study of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
read the sixth chapter, we find our anticipations fulfilled. In the
first two verses of that chapter the writer lays down the first
principles of Christ, the foundation doctrines of the Christian
system, which he takes for granted as known and acknowledged by every
one; they are, repentance from dead works, faith towards God, the
teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of the
resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. Here the imposition
of hands cannot refer to ordination, because, as all the other points
are matters of personal religion and individual practice, not of
ecclesiastical organisation, so we must restrict the imposition of
hands referred to as a principle of the Christian religion, to some
imposition of hands needful for every Christian, not for the few
merely who should be admitted to the work of the ministry. While,
again, its close connection with baptism clearly points to the
imposition of hands in Confirmation, which the Apostles practised and
the primitive Christians adopted from their example. And then, when we
pass to ecclesiastical antiquity and study the works of Tertullian,
the earliest writer who enters into the details of the practices and
ritual established in the Churches, we find imposition of hands
connected with baptism exactly as stated in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and viewed as the channel by which the gift of the Holy Ghost
is conveyed,[154] not in the shape of miraculous gifts, but in all
that edifying, consoling, and sanctifying power which every individual
needs, and in virtue of which the New Testament writers, in common
with Tertullian, call baptized men temples of the Holy Ghost and
partakers of the Holy Ghost.[155]
[152] I was much struck the other day with a modern instance of
this. The Plymouth Brethren boast themselves as the least
traditional of sects. They are, however, just at present split all
the world over into two divisions, the great subject of debate
being the writings of a Mr. Raven. He has ventured upon some
perilous speculations concerning the nature of Christ's person. I
have seen a formal indictment drawn out by his opponents, in which
his opinions are contrasted with statements in the writings of
their founder, the late J. N. Darby, which are evidently the final
authority and standard of appeal for them.
[153] Thus in 1 Cor. xi. 2 St. Paul says, "Now I praise you that
ye remember me in all things, and hold fast the traditions, even
as I delivered them to you," and then goes on to discuss the
question of veiling of women, showing the character of the
traditions thus delivered. With this verse may be compared similar
references in 1 Cor. vii. 17, 2 Thess. ii. 15 and iii. 9.
[154] See Tertullian on Baptism, chap. vi., where he says, "Not
that in the waters we obtain the Holy Spirit, but in the water,
under the influence of the angel, we are cleansed, and thus
prepared for the Holy Spirit." And again, in chap. viii. he
describes the course followed after baptism thus: "In the next
place the hand is laid on us, invoking and inviting the Holy
Spirit through the words of benediction." To pass from Tertullian
to a very different witness, we may note that Calvin in his
commentary on Heb. vi. 2 says, "This one place abundantly
testifies that the origin of this ceremony (imposition of hands on
the baptized) came from the Apostles." He differs from Tertullian,
however. Calvin does not view it so much as a channel of Divine
grace as a rite for profession of faith and solemn prayer, and as
such would have confirmation continued as a necessary complement
of infant baptism.
[155] Compare 1 Cor. vi. 19 with Heb. vi. 4, 5.