Question:
What books are helpful in my goal of accepting of apostolic succession, especially ones with historical and biblical references?
Answer:
The best things to read are the writings of the Fathers of the Church because they offer a witness to the original Christian sense of apostolic succession. So take a look at this passage from St. Irenaeus.
Here you will find the whole doctrine already clearly held in the first century as common Christian teaching. The rest is all commentary.
No one ever thought of questioning the doctrine of apostolic succession until the Protestant movement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so the burden of historical proof is on them. As far as we are concerned, Sacred Scripture and Tradition are clear from the very beginning. The Protestants are the innovators.
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