h in Whiston's
'Memoirs.' 'Confirmation,' he said, 'is, I doubt, much oftener omitted
than performed. And it is usually done in the Church of England in such
a hurry and disorder, that it hardly deserves the name of a sacred
ordinance of Christianity.'[1236] Fifty years again after this a
clergyman, speaking of the great use of confirmation fitly prepared for
and duly solemnised, describes it as being very constantly nothing
better than 'a holiday ramble.'[1237] If, as Secker in one of his
Charges said, the esteem of it was generally preserved in England,[1238]
it certainly retained that respect in spite of circumstances which must
inevitably have tended to bring it into disregard and contempt. But
there was generally one preservative at least to keep the rite from
degenerating into a mere unedifying ceremony. There was no period in the
last century when the office and person of a bishop was not looked upon
with a good deal of reverence among the people generally; nor is there
any part of a bishop's office in which he speaks with so much weight of
fatherly authority as when he confirms the young. And, besides, it would
be very erroneous to suppose that there were not many bishops and many
clergymen who did their utmost to make the rite an impressive reality.

That abominable system of clandestine marriages which reached its acme
in the neighbourhood of the Debtors' Prison in the Fleet, has been made
mention of by many writers.[1239] Apart from these glaring scandals
there had been up to that date much irregularity in marriages. Banns
were an established ordinance; but notwithstanding the remonstrances of
some of the clergy, who urged, like Parson Adams, that the Church had
prescribed a form with which all Christians ought to comply,[1240] they
were, as Walpole says, 'totally in disuse, except among the inferior
people.'[1241] Licences were obtained too easily,[1242] and not
sufficiently insisted upon, and evening marriages were by no means
unknown.[1243] After 1753 these abuses ceased. But most readers will
remember that until a very recent date Church feeling had not restored
to their proper honour the publication of banns. They were thought
somewhat plebeian; and the high-fashionable and aristocratic method was
to celebrate a marriage by special licence in a drawing-room, and with
curtailed service.[1244]

The costly but ugly and unmeaning appurtenances which a simpler taste
will soon, it is to be hoped, banish from