given them authority to preach and to heal.^[1]  But after His Resurrection He gave them a special commission and authorization to do His work,^[2] and before His Ascension promised to endow them for the work with power from on high.^[3]  Their dominant position is indicated in the fact that the history of the early Church is entitled ‘The Acts of the Apostles’.  They

exercised supreme authority in the administration of discipline,^[4] safeguarding the Faith against false teachers,^[5] supervising Church finances,^[6] and ordaining by the laying on of hands.^[7]  ‘The Church exists by Divine authority, and authority in the Church was committed to the Apostles, who were divinely designated as its organs, to exercise it in a permanent stewardship of grace and truth.  Thus, not only was a Society established; it received the beginnings of a structure.  The Church grew up round its Apostolic Ministry.  There is a given‑ness both in its faith and in its form. There was always a cleros and there was always a laos.  They stood side by side from the beginning.  There was no question of a laos spinning a cleros out of its own vitals.  The cleros was as fixed and fundamental a feature in the Society as the eye is in the physical body.’^[8]

Article XXIII denies the right of any man to preach or administer the Sacraments ‘before he be lawfully called and sent’.  The inward call of God to serve in the sacred Ministry is essential, as the Ordinal recognizes;^[9] but it is not sufficient in itself.  If the individual were the sole judge of his call, the Church would be at the mercy of every man who felt so called, whatever his doctrinal views might be.  The New Testament makes it quite clear that in this, as in other matters, the character and views of the individual must be tested and confirmed by the Church.  The Epistles to Timothy and to Titus, for instance, emphasize that no man is to be accepted for the Ministry, unless he satisfies certain requirements, and great importance is attached to sound doctrine.^[10]  The idea that anyone may perform ministerial functions without being ordained is clearly at variance with New Testament teaching and practice.