Putting aside the conversation about the validity of Anglican Holy Orders, let us take a look at Anglican Confirmation. In a previous post I described what amounts to valid form and valid matter in both the Eastern and Western Church. Valid form is in the Western Church has always been:

Accipe signaculum doni Spiritus Sancti.
(“Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit.”)

In the Eastern Churches (both Orthodox and Catholic) the form is:

Sphragis doreas Pneumatos Hagiou.
(“The seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit.”)

The Anglican form as found in the 1549, 1552, 1559, and 1662 English Books of Common Prayer, the 1928 and 1979 American Books of Common Prayer, and the 1978 Book of Common Prayer says nothing about the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit! These rites mention neither “the seal” or “the gift” of the Holy Spirit. Why is this?

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer changed the form in his first Book of Common Prayer (1549). He did retain laying on of hands and a form stating:

N. I signe thee with the signe of the crosse, and laye my hande upon thee. In the name of the father, and of the sonne, and of the holy gost. Amen. [1]

This is not sufficient and the statement was even further weakened in Cranmer’s more Protestant revision of the Book of Common Prayer three years later (1552):

DEFENDE, O lord, this child with thy heavenly grace, that he may continue thine for ever, and dayly encrease in thy holy spirite more and more, until he come unto thy everlastyng kyngdom. Amen.

This 1552 prayer became the received Anglican “form” for Confirmation. It is not valid because it is simply a prayer over the candidate. It asks for a “daily increase in the Holy Spirit” but that is not what the sacrament is. It is the conferral of an indelible seal on the soul.

It goes without saying that Anglicanism does not require the presence of chrism, traditionally considered the “matter” of the sacrament of Confirmation. Thus, we might conclude that even if a person were confirmed by an Anglican bishop with valid orders, he or she would not truly be Confirmed because the form is deficient and out of accord with the Sacred Tradition of the Eastern and Western Church.

[1] This differs from the received medieval form: “I sign thee with the sign of the cross, I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”