True Apostolic Succession
IllustrationAnalogy★★★★Though you have a straight line of apostolic successors, if your work is poor, you are not in the line of succession; and if your church does not make full-grown men, it is not. I do not care anything about the line of succession of my grapes, if my vineyard brings forth better wine than your vineyard does. You may say that yours came from those that Noah planted ; but they are not so good as mine, after all. For by their fruit ye shall know them. And the best of all churches, as of all orthodoxies, and all doctrines, and all usages, and all governments, is this—What is their effect upon the generations of men ?
The point
What matters is not the line of apostolic succession but the fruit produced. Churches and doctrines are judged by their effect on generations of people, not genealogy.