Acts 8 - Introduction

Excursus.

The Laying on of the Apostles' Hands in Samaria its Influence on the Practice of the Christian Church.

‘The ancient custom of the Church was, after they had baptized, to add thereunto imposition of hands with effectual prayer for the illumination of God's most Holy Spirit, to confirm and perfect that which the grace of the same Spirit had begun in baptism' (Hooker, Eccl Polity, v. 66). This ordinance was derived from the practice of the apostles, as related in this passage, and also in Acts 19:6; see also Hebrews 6:2.

It was no new custom; it had ever been practised in the Church of the Old Testament. Thus Israel, when he blessed Ephraim and Manasses, laid his hands upon their heads and prayed (Genesis 48:14). Thus Moses ordained Joshua to be his successor (Numbers 27:18). How common the practice was on solemn occasions, we see from the fact of the women of Israel bringing young children to Christ to put His hands on them and pray. After the Lord's ascension, prayer and the imposition of the apostles' hands were the means whereby, after baptism, the first believers became partakers in greater or less degree of the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost. Of these gifts and graces, the power of working miracles, which so excited the wonder and envy of Simon Magus, was not (except perhaps in very rare and peculiar cases) extended beyond a certain few of those disciples upon whom the apostles themselves laid their hands; but though these special miraculous gifts, which in some cases accompanied the imposition of the apostles' hands, perhaps never very numerous, ceased when the apostles passed away, the rite of laying on of hands, possessing a deeper signification than the mere imparting a temporary miraculous power, was never discontinued, but remained a practice in all the churches.

In the first instance, we know that this sacred rite was performed by the apostles; nor does it appear that this solemn confirmation of the baptized was ever performed in the first years of Christianity by any except the apostles. We find a special mention of St. Paul laying his hands on certain newly-baptized converts. When Episcopal government first appeared in Gentile Christendom is uncertain; early in the second century the Episcopal office, we know, was firmly and widely established. Professor Lightfoot, adopting in great measure the view of Rothe, concludes that during the last thirty years of the first century, in the lifetime of St. John, the new constitution of the Church was organised, and many of the special duties and privileges of the apostles passed to the bishops, who succeeded them in all countries as governors of the churches. Among these special functions hitherto reserved for men of apostolic dignity was ‘confirmation.' At the end of the second century Tertullian wrote; his testimony carries us back to the very verge of the times when men lived who must have heard and seen St. John. In his treatise De Baptismo, he writes as though ‘confirmation' was the unvarying custom in North Africa. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, writing about fifty years later, alludes to it as to an ordinary office of his Episcopal order. ‘They who are baptized,' he says, ‘are brought to the chief pastors of the church, that, by our prayer (Cyprian was a bishop) and the laying on of hands, they may receive the Holy Ghost. Firmilian, bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, who lived about the same time, alludes to bishops as the ordinary ministers of this office. The canons of the council of Eliberis, held not long after, speak of this confirmation of the baptized by the bishop as an universally practised rite. Jerome in the latter end of the fourth century tells us that it was the general practice of the Roman Church for bishops to go about the country villages and remoter places in their dioceses to give imposition of hands to such as were baptized by presbyters and deacons (Adv. Lucifer, c. 4). Augustine about the same period, writing of the practice of the North African Church, says: ‘The apostles only laid hands on men, that the Holy Ghost by their prayers might descend on them, which custom the Church now observed and practised by her bishops or governors also' (De Trinitate, i. 15). Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a few years before had held similar language (see his treatise, De Sacram. l. 3).

We therefore confidently conclude that the Church of Christ from the very earliest times supplemented baptism by prayer and the imposition of hands, to the end that the Holy Ghost might be poured upon those already baptized, grounding the universal custom upon the example of Peter and John related in the eighth chapter of the ‘Acts.' In the first days, it is clear that the apostles alone administered the holy rite. As the Church developed, the duty of administering confirmation passed, with many other of the exclusive privileges of the apostles, to the bishops, who, twenty or thirty years before the close of the first century, probably succeeded to the government of the various churches. Never, except in some special and extraordinary cases, does it seem that this solemn rite of imposition of hands was performed except by the bishop himself.

At the first, there is no doubt but that baptism was immediately followed by confirmation; but it is clear that very soon an interval longer or shorter severed the sacrament from the subsequent rite. And the reasons for this severance are obvious; for, as converts to Christianity multiplied, these in the first instance were more frequently baptized by a minister of an inferior degree, by presbyters or mere deacons, who might baptize but not confirm, as in the case instanced in our present passage when John and Peter confirmed those whom Philip had already baptized. Then, too, as the Church grew older, and Christian families multiplied rapidly in all the great centres of the civilized world, Christian parents began to bring their little ones early to the baptismal font to win for them the covenant blessing, thus laying for them the first foundations of the life of faith. These little ones, early admitted into the family of God, in good time became of an age when they could discharge the duties of Christian men and women; then and not till then did they receive the blessing invoked by the solemn laying on of the chief pastor's hands. And so the rite became in the very earliest times separated from the sacrament the sacrament of baptism admitting them as children into the family of God, and the rite of confirmation coming in subsequently and arming those already baptized, against sin and the varied temptations of life, by means of, to use Tertullian's weighty words again, ‘imposition of hands, with invocation and invitation of the Holy Ghost, which willingly cometh down from the Father to rest upon the purified and blessed bodies, as it were acknowledging the waters of baptism, a fit seat' (De Baptismo, c. 8).