The original discussion paper was written by David Holloway for the council of Reform and the wider church in 1996. It was revised in 1998.
"Our forefathers - the Anglican Reformers - did not believe that episcopacy was essential to the being of the Church. Whitgift's thesis, for example, was clear:
it is plain that any one certain form or kind of external government perpetually to be observed is nowhere in the scripture prescribed to the church.
And Article XIX (of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England) says nothing about a particular form of ministry being essential to the Church. True, a “godly” bishop was seen as perfectly acceptable. But he was acceptable and in a proper succession not by virtue of consecration and his being established in a see, but because of his doctrine. So Bishop Jewel can say to one of his opponents:
Succession, you say, is the chief way, for any Christian man to avoid antichrist. I grant you, if you mean the succession of doctrine.
Not unreasonably, therefore, the base unit for our Reformers in practical terms was not the diocese, but the parish congregation. The Church of England was a federation of congregations committed to mere Christianity to use Richard Baxter's phrase (borrowed by C.S.Lewis). Unlike independent congregationalists it was an ordered federation where ordained ministry was validated through a wider connection. Unlike the Roman Catholics it was not theologically rooted in episcopal dioceses and bishops, but as Article XIX says:
The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.
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.
To read the entire discussion paper, click here.
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