teen; the Roman
rather earlier. The catechetic course, which formerly preceded the complete
rite, now intervenes between its two halves; and the sponsors who formerly
attested the worthiness of the candidate and received him up as _anadochi_
out of the font, have become god-parents, who take the baptismal vows
vicariously for infants who cannot answer for themselves. In the East, on
the contrary, the complete rite is read over the child, who is thus
confirmed from the first. The Roman church already foreshadowed the change
and gave a peculiar salience to confirmation as early as the 3rd century,
when it decreed that persons already baptized by heretics, but reverting to
the church should not be baptized over again, but only have hands laid on
them. It was otherwise in Africa and the East. Here they insisted in such
cases on a repetition of the entire rite, baptism and confirmation
together. The Cathars (_q.v._) of the middle ages discarded water baptism
altogether as being a Jewish rite, but retained the laying on of hands with
the _traditio precis_ as sufficient initiation. This they called the
spiritual baptism, and interpreted Matt. xxviii. 19, as a command to
practise it, and not water baptism.

8. _Disciplina arcani._--The communication to the candidates of the Creed
and Lord's Prayer was a solemn rite. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his instruction
of the catechumens, urges them to learn the Creed by heart, but not write
it down. On no account must they divulge it to unbaptized persons. The same
rule already meets us in Clement of Alexandria before the year 200. In time
this rule gave rise to what is called the _Disciplina arcani._ Following
the fashion of the pagan mysteries in which men were only permitted to gaze
upon the sacred objects after minute lustrations and scrupulous
purifications, Christian teachers came to represent the Creed, Lord's
Prayer and Lord's Supper as mysteries to be guarded in silence and never
divulged either to the unbaptized or to the pagans. And yet Justin Martyr,
Tertullian and other apologists of the 2nd century had found nothing to
conceal from the eye and ear of pagan emperors and their ministers. In the
3rd century this love of mystification reached the pitch of hiding even the
gospels from the unclean eyes of pagans. Probably Mgr. Pierre Battifol is
correct in supposing that the _Disciplina arcani_ was more or less of a
make-believe, a bit of belletristic trifling on the part of the
over-