Although the Lutheran symbols affirm the desire to retain the apostolic succession and hist. episcopate (Ap XIV 1, 5) only a few canonically consecrated bishops. accepted the Reformation and, except in Sweden., political and other considerations prevented them from transmitting the apostolic succession to the Luth. community. Lacking bishops. to ordain their candidates for the sacred ministry, the Luths. appealed to the patristically attested facts that originally bishops. and priests constituted only one order; that the right to ordain was inherent in the priesthood (a principle on which a number of popes of the 15th c., among them Boniface IX, Martin V, and Innocent VIII, acted in authorizing Cistercian abbots who were only priests to ordain); that thence “an ordination administered by a pastor in his own church is valid by divine law” (Tractatus 65); and that when the canonical bishops. refuse to impart ordination “the churches are compelled by divine law to ordain pastors and ministers, using their own pastors for this purpose (adhibitis suis pastoribus)” (ibid., 72). The succession of the ministry in the Lutheran Church may therefore be presumed to be a valid presbyterial one.
