Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Doctrine of the Church and Christian Reunion: Being the Bampton Lectures for the Year 1920
The second problem that I have had before me has been the practical one, partly dependent upon the historical question, but to a certain extent separated from it: the problem of religious reunion, and in connection with that the somewhat complicated questions which have been raised concerning validity of Orders and Sacraments. Those questions, although always present, became really acute in the discussion about Anglican Orders and their recognition by the Church of Rome which took place in the years 1895-96. To that controversy I have referred in the body of this work. Its effect on myself was to create profound distrust of the methods and theology of the Church of Rome, and at the same time a feeling that we had not sufficiently probed to the bottom the question of what we mean by valid Orders and Sacraments. More over, it was impossible not to ask whether our relation towards Nonconformists was not open to just the same criticism as the relation of the Church of Rome towards ourselves.
From time to time also the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession came before me, and I found myself compelled to consider what it meant. On the one side episcopacy, the regular succession of bishops, the solemnity of our orderly administration of the Sacrament of Orders, appealed to me with great force; and, moreover, much of the criticism directed against it seemed to me unhistorical and sectarian. On the other hand, Apostolic Succession as ordinarily taught in the Church of England seemed to be mechanical and entirely unreal. I could not see any marked superiority - often, in fact, there seemed to be real inferiority - in the spiritual life and capacity of our clergy, and Anglicanism, although extraordinarily attractive to me, seemed often to fail in life and effectiveness. When I came to examine the doctrine historically, I was equally surprised and gratified to find how different was the more primitive teaching on the subject from that which was customary in Anglican circles.
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