Both the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments imply an ordered Ministry.  Our Lord calls and commissions the Apostles to proclaim the Gospel,^[1] and an authorized Ministry has a necessary place in later evangelism by the Church: ‘How shall they preach, except they be sent’.^[2]  The evidence of early Church history is that administration of the Holy Communion was confined to the higher orders of the Ministry, Bishops and Priests.  It is also required that Sacraments should be administered ‘according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same’.  And He commanded that Baptism should be performed with water ‘in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost’,^[3] whilst in the Lord’s Supper He used bread and wine, gave thanks for them, blessed and broke the bread, and declared the elements to be His Body and Blood.^[4]  Even the variations in the several versions of Jesus’ words and actions at the institution of the Holy Communion serve to indicate the importance attached to them in the evangelical tradition, and our Article is well warranted in requiring their due observance.

Our Lord intended the Church to be truly CATHOLIC, to ‘go into all the world’^[5] to proclaim ‘the whole truth’^[6] of the Gospel to ‘every creature’^[7] and to deal with every type of sin.^[8]  It is also APOSTOLIC, as having been ‘sent’^[9] and given its mission and Apostolic Ministry by Him.  To these three ‘Notes’ of the Church, given in the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed adds that the Church is HOLY too.  The members of the Church are not yet perfectly holy, but we have the capacity for holiness, for, in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, already ‘we are become partakers of Christ’^[10] and have been ‘made partakers of the Holy Ghost’.^[11]

The doctrine of the Church in the New Testament is in full accord with our own experience.  We know very well that we are often unworthy of our high calling as members of the Body of Christ, yet we remain members of the Body unless we wilfully reject the privileges of membership.  The Prodigal Son was still a son even when he was in the far country; he did not become a son by his act of repentance.  We, in our Baptism, became ‘members of Christ’ and ‘the children of God’.  As St. Paul says to the Galatians, ‘Ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ’.^[12]  We received ‘the adoption of sons’ in our Baptism,^[13] and no subsequent act of ours can confer on us any higher status or privilege.  After our Baptism we may, and should as we grow in grace, become more fully aware of the redeeming love of God, and the realization should make us more zealous to serve Him in the fellowship of His Church.  But the New Testament knows of no case of a person leaving the Church in order to be saved

On the contrary, those who wanted to be saved joined the Church, as we read in Acts 2:47: ‘The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved’.

That carefulness of statement which is a feature of the Articles appears again in the concluding paragraph: ‘As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies) but also in matters of Faith.’  The Church of Rome has admitted many superstitious practices in devotion and ritual, and has added to the Faith such doctrines as Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints, and Papal Supremacy, and since the Reformation, the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Infallibility of the Pope.  On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church accepts the Scriptures and the Creeds, and has the traditional Form of the Ministry.  As individual Christians do not necessarily forfeit their sainthood through sins and short‑comings, neither do the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome deprive her of a place in the Body of Christ.