"Founded on the doctrine and practice of the apostles": Confirmation in early US Episcopalianism and Canadian Anglicanism
Connecticut's Samuel Johnson told Bishop Gibson [of London] in 1731 that his fellow Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionaries were either omitting the exhortation entirely or else inserting the phrase "if there be opportunity". What made sense in Connecticut would seem to have been serviceable in Virginia as well. In 1724 Hugh Jones reported that Virginia parsons omitted the final injunction - John K. Nelson A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parson, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776, p.219.
If the presence of Anglicanism in the North American colonies is dated from the first parish founded in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the result is that for nearly two centuries, North American Anglican life was without resident bishops - and thus without Confirmation. The rhythms of Anglican life, its sacramental discipline, its pastoral ethos, and its imagination had no experience of Confirmation (bar candidates for Orders, after travelling across the Atlantic, being Confirmed immediately prior to their ordinations by the Bishop of London). It was not until the consecration of Seabury for Connecticut in 1784, and White for Pennsylvania, Provoost for New York, and Inglis for Nova Scotia in 1787 that Confirmation could become part of Anglican life in North America.
What is significant is that after nearly two centuries of it not being present at all in North American Anglican life, it very quickly indeed became established a significant feature of Episcopalianism in the United States and Anglicanism in Canada. As suggested in Tuesday's post, part of the reason for this must surely have been the vigor with which the new episcopate in the United States and Canada promoted the robust, vibrant theology of Confirmation which they inherited from the eighteenth century Church of England.
Samuel Seabury's first charge to the clergy of Connecticut in 1785 exemplifies this, with its reliance on the crucial Scriptural texts consistently invoked by the classical Anglican teaching, Acts 8 and 19, and Hebrews 6:
that old and sacred rite, handed down to us from the apostolic age, by the primitive Church, - the Laying on of hands upon those who have been baptized, and, by proper authority, admitted into the Christian Church, and which is now commonly called Confirmation though, in truth, there seems to me to be more in the rite than a bare confirmation of the baptismal vow; and that it implies, and was originally understood to imply, the actual communication of the Holy Spirit to those who worthily received it ...
We suppose, and I think justly, that the rite is founded on apostolical practice [referring to the "laying on of hands" in Hebrews 6:2] ... No commentator or expositor of the holy Scriptures ever understood this text of any other laying on of hands, but that in confirmation, till since the Reformation; and the celebrated Calvin himself gives it as his opinion, that this one text shows evidently, that Confirmation was instituted by the Apostles. In the 8th chapter of the Acts it is recorded, that when many of the Samaritans had been converted and baptized by St. Philip the deacon, the College of Apostles at Jerusalem sent two of their own number, Peter and John, who, when they had prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost, laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. In the 19th chapter, St. Paul, finding some disciples at Ephesus who had been baptized only with the baptism of John, had them baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when he had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them ...
In Confirmation, by the imposition of the hands of the Bishop and prayer, we believe the Holy Spirit to be given for sanctification, i.e. for carrying into effect that regeneration which is conferred in Baptism. By Baptism we are taken out of our natural state of sin and death, into which we are born by our natural birth, and are translated, transplanted, or born again into the Church of Christ, a state of grace, and endless life; and by Confirmation, or the imposition of the hands of the Bishop, when we personally ratify our baptismal vow and covenant, we are endued with the Holy Spirit to enable us to overcome sin , and to perfect holiness in the fear of God.
Seabury, of course, as a representative of the Connecticut High Church tradition, would be expected to share this teaching on Confirmation. What, however, of the rather more low church Bishop White? His Lectures on the Catechism of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1813) might be interpreted as dissenting from the classical Anglican teaching, with the suggestion that the Acts 8 and 19 texts were "with an especial view to the participation of those miraculous gifts, which began on the day of Pentecost" rather than a "perpetual obligation" for the Church. This, however, is not what White affirms. He has already stated that these two texts are "the origin" of Confirmation. He continues:
if it can be proved, that there was a rite of this description, in and immediately after the apostolick age; we may infer, that the rite began in the manner recorded in the Acts; and that the difference between it, as it appeared in the beginning, and when it came under subsequent administration, consisted altogether in there having been attached to the former, a circumstance of temporary duration. That this was indeed the case, we prove from the first of the two verses of the sixth chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews ...
There was no reason for [the reference to Baptism in Hebrews 6:2] being followed by the laying on of hands; unless it were also a rite, which concerned the members of the Church in general, and occupying the very place which we assign to it, in the arrangement of our religious services. The representation is confirmed by the mention of "the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment": primary articles of our Creed, and interesting to people of all descriptions. There seems no possible way of accounting for the introduction of "the laying on of hands", in the enumeration here made, except as designed of what we call Confirmation.
White, in other words, affirmed the Scriptural basis for the Rite of Confirmation in the classical Anglican teaching. We might also point to White as Presiding Bishop signing the 1808 Pastoral Letter from the PECUSA House of Bishops, in which the classical Church of England teaching on Confirmation was expounded:
... the nature of the Apostolic rite of confirmation, and by persuading to an observance of it. Were it an institution of human origin, we should admire it for its tendency to impress, on persons advancing to maturity, a sense of obligations resting on them, independently on their consent, in this ordinance voluntarily given. But we remind our brethren, knowing that they agree with us in the opinion, that it was ordained, and practised by: the Apostles of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that in the ages immediately subsequent to the age of the Apostles, it was one of the means of exciting to the sublime virtue which adorned them. Let us remember that the same grace, first given in baptismal regeneration, is increased and strengthened by confirmation. And let us extend the use of this holy and Apostolic rite, as one of the first principles of the Christian Religion, and a great mean of leading on towards that perfection of Christian morals, which is its object.
It is this teaching which led Provoost of New York in his first charge to describe Confirmation as "an apostolic ordinance, which I shall feel it my duty very frequently to administer to the persons under my care". The vigour with which this teaching was promoted from the outset as a distinctive aspect of the apostolic character of Protestant Episcopalianism explains why, after the Rite of Confirmation being entirely absent from colonial Anglican life, it was quickly and popularly embraced. This is seen from an eyewitness account of Provoost's first Confirmations, quoted in an 1859 Life of Bishop Provoost:
His first Confirmation was held in St. Paul's Chapel - Trinity Church was then in ashes. More than three hundred persons were confirmed. The candidates occupied the body of the church below. The congregation were in the galleries. The Bishop addressed the candidates from the pulpit before the Confirmation. Many aged persons were confirmed, some of them more than ninety years of age.
The same enthusiastic reception and vigorous promotion of the classical Anglican teaching on Confirmation was also seen north of the border, in those colonies which had remained loyal to the Crown and in which significant numbers of Loyalists settled after 1783. The same experience of the absence of bishop and Confirmation had defined Church of England life in these colonies. The episcopate of Charles Inglis, however, witnessed a similarly robust emphasis on the teaching on Confirmation inherited from the Church of England. In his first charge in 1788 to the clergy of Nova Scotia, noting that "In this country ... till lately, there was no opportunity of being Confirmed", Inglis declared:
When Children, and others more advanced in years, are thus duly instructed, so that they can give an account of their faith according to the Catechism; they may then partake of that scriptural and beneficial Rite of Confirmation which I shall hereafter, with God's assistance, administer in the several parts of this Diocese, and elsewhere in my extensive charge, to such as are properly prepared. This Ordinance was religiously observed in the primitive Church and attended with salutary effects - may it be productive of similar effects amongst us and help to revive a spirit of true religion among us [a footnote points to "Bishop Taylor, Mr. Wheatly, Archbishop Secker, and other eminent Divines of our Church"].
We see here the characteristic understanding that the Anglican practice of Confirmation was rooted in Scripture and primitive practice, contributing to an understanding of Anglicanism as standing in faithful, meaningful continuity with the apostolic and primitive Church. In his 1791 charge, Inglis further expounded the significance of Confirmation, doing so in a manner explicitly reliant on the classical teaching:
Confirmation is founded on the practice and doctrine of the apostles [a footnote references Acts 8 and 19, and Hebrews 6]; it has been as constantly administered in the Christian Church since their time, as either Baptifm or the Lord's Supper, nor were any admitted to partake of the latter, before they were confirmed. For although it was not deemed a Sacrament, nor really is one m the appropriate sense of the word, like Baptism and the Eucharist; yet it was considered as the consummation of Baptism. Since, hereby, those who were baptized took upon themselves their baptismal vows, made a public profession of the Christian Faith, and through prayer and imposition of the Bishop's hands, received that strengthening grace that was necessary in their spiritual conflicts and warfare [a footnote states, "See Bishop Taylor on Confirmation"] ... And if there ever is a revival of true, rational piety and religion among us, I am persuaded that one principal means of effecting it will be - a proper regard to Confirmation, according to the practice of the primitive Church, and the order of our own, founded on the former, and on the word of God.
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