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
not represent the whole of Christianity as it finds expression in the
first Christian age or in the New Testament.[33] The Roman Church is a
one-sided outgrowth of the religion of Christ--a development of those
qualities in Christianity with which the Latin genius has special
affinity. It has committed itself to unhistorical doctrines, involving a
deficient appreciation of the intellectual and moral claim of truth to
be valued for its own sake no less than for its results. Much of its
teaching can only be explained as the result of an 'over-reckless
accommodation to the unregenerate natural instincts in religion.'[34]
The fact that the largest section of Christendom has become what Rome
now is, is no proof that theirs is the line of true development. We can
see this clearly enough if we consider the case of Buddhism. The main
existing developments of Buddhism are a mere travesty of the spirit of
Sakya Muni.[35] In this way Dr. Gore anticipates and rejects the
argument since then put forward by Loisy, and other Liberal Catholic
apologists, that history has proved Roman Catholicism to be the proper
development of Christ's religion. In short, the Anglican Church, which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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