Part Three · Sources and Rationale of the Offices
Chapter XI
OCCASIONAL OFFICES:
BAPTISM, INSTRUCTION, AND CONFIRMATION
§ 1
The Baptismal Liturgy
The rites of initiation into the Christian Church offer some significant parallels to the eucharistic Liturgy. In the traditional view of the Church, both the “Great Sacraments” claim immediate institution by our Lord, assert his authority for their continued observance, and embody definite forms of words attributed to him. Both display the fixed procedure of a distinctive Rite, uniform in essentials throughout the world, attested in the earliest Christian writers, and even to some extent recognizable in the New Testament accounts.
Indeed a fully developed structure of the baptismal order receives rather earlier and wider attestation than that of the Eucharist. Moreover, this Baptismal Liturgy, as it has every right to be called, has on the whole been less subject to accretions and innovations than the Communion. Hence to this day it is inherently the same in all branches of the historic Church, and very little altered anywhere from what it is known to have been at the beginning of the third century, and what it may have been much earlier.
Just as in the case of the Eucharist, of late the ultimate origins of the baptismal rites have been the subject of somewhat searching criticism. The results of that investigation,…
Editorial note Chapter XI continues from this point on book page 220. The remainder of §1 The Baptismal Liturgy and the subsequent sections (§§2 onward, treating Baptism in the New Testament and the third century, the Sarum Rite, Anglican revisions, the Offices of Instruction, and Confirmation) are awaiting upload of the next OCR PDF, and will be added to this reading edition as they become available.
…stitutions of Archbishop Peckham of 1281. Properly speaking, this rubric has no bearing on the practice of what was known in England as “occasional conformity”; it defines admission to the full and permanent privileges of the status of a communicant in the Church.
The latest English and Scottish books require, when possible, the presence of a Godparent at Confirmation. This is in line with the declaration of their responsibility to see that their Godchildren be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed — which is made an explicit promise in the American rite. It has been suggested that it might be desirable to have such Godparents stand at the altar-rail with their Godchildren, and themselves, with the Priest, present them to the Bishop. The present ceremony symbolizes the unsatisfactory fact that the enlistment, preparation, and presentation of candidates is in practice left to the sole responsibility of the parish priest. A change of rubric here might add considerably to the strength of the Church.