Treatise On Confirmation

260. • Confirmation is defined: A Sacrament of the new law, by which, through an anointing with chrism, under a certain form of words, there is given to the baptized the fullness of the Holy Spirit, for firmly believing and for intrepidly confessing the Faith.

It is clear that Confirmation is a true Sacrament distinct from Baptism: 1. from the definition of the Church. For thus Eugene IV in the Decree of Faith: Through Baptism we are spiritually reborn; through Confirmation we are increased in grace and strengthened in faith. - See also Trent, sess. 7, can. 1, on Confirmation; 2. from the fact that there are found in it the three things essentially required and sufficient for every Sacrament, namely an exterior rite, the promise of grace, and the institution of Christ. For: 1. the exterior rite is had in the things and words, or in the matter and form; 2. the promise and conferral of grace is had in Acts 8.17, where it is said that Peter and John, sent to Samaria to confirm the faithful already baptized, laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Spirit; 3. the divine institution is sufficiently understood from the power itself by which the Apostles, after Baptism, conferred the Holy Spirit through the imposition of hands; for they could not do this from their own virtue.

But when this Sacrament was instituted is not established. More probably it was instituted after the resurrection, when Christ said to the Apostles (John 20.21): As the living Father sent me, so I send you, etc., by which words he conferred on them full episcopal power over the mystical body of the Church. According to others, Christ instituted the Sacrament of Confirmation at the supper, after the institution itself of the Eucharist.

We must treat: 1. of the matter and form of Confirmation; 2. of its Minister; 3. of the subject of the same.