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 indisputably possesses the Apostolic Succession, has no reason to go humbly to Borne to obtain recognition of her Orders.