.

Dr. Gore has no difficulty in proving that the sacerdotal theory of the
Christian ministry took shape at an early date, and has been
consistently maintained in the Catholic Church from ancient times to our
own day. It is much more difficult to trace it back to the Apostolic
age, even if, with Dr. Gore, we accept as certain the Pauline authorship
of the Pastoral Epistles, which is still _sub judice_. The 'Didache' is
a stumbling-block to those who wish to find Catholic practice in the
century after our Lord's death; but that document is dismissed as
composed by a Jewish Christian for a Jewish Christian community. After
the second century, the apologists for the priesthood are in smooth
waters.

The conclusion is that 'the various presbyterian and congregationalist
organisations, in dispensing with the episcopal succession, violated a
fundamental law of the Church's life.'[30] 'A ministry not episcopally
received is invalid, that is to say, it falls outside the conditions of
covenanted security, and cannot justify its existence in terms of the
covenant.'[31] The Anglican Church is not asking for the cause to be
decided all her own way; for she has much to do to recall herself to her
true principles. 'God's promise to Judah was that she should remember
her ways and should be ashamed, when she should receive her sisters
Samaria and Sodom, and that He would give them to her for daughters, but
not by her covenant.'[32] The 'covenant' which the Church is to be
content to forgo in order to recover Samaria and _Sodom_ (the 'Free
Churches' can hardly be expected to relish this method of opening
negotiations) is apparently the covenant between Church and State. 'In
the future the Anglican Church must be content to act as, first of all,
part and parcel of the Catholic Church, ruled by her laws, empowered by
her spirit.' The bishops are to be ready to maintain, at all cost, the
inherent spiritual independence which belongs to their office.

Such a theory of the essentials of a true Church necessarily requires,
as a corollary, a refutation of the Roman Catholic theory of orders,
which reduces the Anglican clergy to the same level as the ministers of
schismatical sects. Bishop Gore answers the objection that the Roman
Church is the logical expression of his theory of the ministry, by
saying that Roman Catholicism is not the development of the whole of the
Church, but only of a part of it; and moreover, that spiritually it does
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