When the baby is brought to the font to make divers promises, of the making of which he is profoundly unconscious--however noisily he may at times convey his utter disgust at the whole proceeding--the godfathers and godmothers are directed to see that the child is "brought to the bishop to be confirmed by him, so soon as he can say the creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and be further instructed in the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose." It is scarcely necessary to say that these words--being in the Prayer-Book--are not meant to be taken literally, and that the bishop would be much astonished if all the small children in the Sunday School who can glibly repeat the required lesson, were to be brought up to him for confirmation. As a matter of fact, the large majority of godfathers and godmothers do not trouble themselves about seeing their godchildren brought to confirmation at all, and the children are sent up when they are about fifteen, at which period most of them who are above the Sunday School going grade, are rapidly "crammed" with the Catechism, which they as rapidly forget when the day of confirmation is over. The Christian name of the child being given in answer to the first question of the Catechism, the second inquiry proceeds: "Who gave you this name?" The child is taught to answer--"My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." Thus, the first lesson imprinted on the child's memory is one of the most objectionable of the dogmas of the Church, that of baptismal regeneration. In baptism he is "made" something; then he becomes something which he was not before; according to the baptismal office, he is given in baptism "that thing which by nature he cannot have," and being under the wrath of God, he is delivered from that curse, and is received for God's "own child by adoption;" he is also "incorporated" into the "holy Church," and thus becomes "a member of Christ," being made a part of the body of which Christ is the head; this being done, he is, of course, an "inheritor of the kingdom of heaven" through the "adoption."