The Rev. Dr. Hall desires to know by what authority the Eastern Church allows priests to administer Confirmation. This authority is derived from ancient and ecumenical practice. The priest administers this mystery or sacrament, as he does Baptism and other mysteries, with the same degree of dependence on the Bishop, who alone has the sum of sacerdotal power in a given district.
The Eucharist itself, or Holy Communion, may be celebrated in a certain city or place by a priest only with the consent of the Bishop, and for this reason the latter himself consecrates altars, or in their stead gives the churches and priests the antimins. Likewise in Confirmation the priest anoints the newly baptized with chrism—an oil consecrated by the Bishop. Thus, the priest, in the Eastern Church, administering one or another sacrament, is in like manner clothed with sufficient and proper authority. The Church Ecumenical has never prohibited the Bishops to delegate their power to priests in administering Confirmation or Holy Chrism, and the rights of Bishops to freely give of what they have freely received may not be legally questioned in the Christian regime.
Unction with chrism by priests was in universal practice even throughout the Western Church until the thirteenth century, but from this time the administering of this mystery gradually passed to the exclusive practice of the Bishops. Still for a long time the priests in the West continued to anoint with chrism the newly baptized, at the same time reading the prayer appointed to be read in the sacrament of Confirmation, according to ancient Latin Rituals. And so the West proves that the practice of uniting the mystery of Unction with Chrism with that of Baptism, and administered by a priest, as is still done in the East, is continued from Apostolic times.
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