# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1862_S115
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Sacramental Conception of Confirmation. 115

that even the presbyters were ordained by the laying on of hands, who gives the church the authority to derive from that probability a legal obligation for herself? In a word: does it follow, from the fact that the apostles of their time established this or that in the congregations, introduced one or another usage there, made one or another arrangement among them, that the whole succeeding church is bound to all these arrangements, usages, and ordinances — or shall we rather rest content with that Reformation principle which, for instance with regard to the laying on of hands, J. Gerhard urges against Bellarmine: that from the fact that the apostles used the rite of cheirothesia it is by no means to be concluded that this rite rests on a divine command and divine institution; indeed, even if Christ himself had employed this rite at the ordination of the apostles, it still could not thereby be proven that a divine command and divine institution of it exists for the church (Loci XII, 149)? Our evangelical church stands and falls with the twofold principle: first, that no ritual arrangement whatsoever, however beautiful and excellent it may be, can have been made into a law for her by Christ or the apostles; and second, that no sacramental act, in which a definite spiritual gift is bound to a definite outward usage, may be acknowledged by her without a corresponding institutio divina and a specific mandatum Christi. — — — These are the principles with which one must first come to terms, before one can be in a position, in a dogmatically secure manner, to judge the findings of what the New Testament tells us about the laying on of hands at Baptism, and to apply them to confirmation. And we had all the more reason to point to these principles, since the author of the essay in question either does not know them or does not acknowledge them. For, in maintaining that confirmation is something sacrament-like or a sacramental act, he could not avoid recalling what is taught, in accordance with the Confessions, in the Apology concerning confirmation and extreme unction. Both are there (XIII, 6) designated as ceremonies, which derive from the ancient fathers, and which even the church has never regarded as necessary to salvation. "For they have neither the command nor the mandate of God. It is therefore well to distinguish these from those named above, which are instituted and commanded by God's Word and carry an attached promise of God." The author has not taken any particular pains to reconcile himself, in favor of his own opinion, with this testimony of the church, which seems so very much out of harmony with it. The context of the passage, he remarks, shows that here God's command and mandate as a sacrament are denied to confirmation only in order to distinguish it from Baptism, the Supper, and Absolution, and to justify the church, which has never regarded it as necessary to salvation. This, however, does not in the least alter his own conception, which seeks to show the proper position of confirmation between the two divine acts specifically called sacraments. —