A26898:1435
Church-history of the government of bishops and their councils abbreviated including the chief part…
Church-history of the government of bishops and their councils abbreviated including the chief part of the government of Christian princes and popes, and a true account of the most troubling controversies and heresies till the Reformation ... / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed by B. Griffin for Thomas Simmons, 1680
Church-History OF BISHOPS And their COUNCILS ABRIDGED, &c. › Chapter 10
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
§ 64. And now Reader, I leave it to thy judgment, whether Gregory Nazianzen knew not what he said, when he wished there were no [higher and lower] among Bishops; and when he spake so much of their ambition, levity and temerity, and of the evil effects of their Councils in his time. Whether Patriarchal dignity was not a great temptation, when to the Son of a Prince on one side, and to the great and noble Secretary of the Emperor on the other side, it seemed a prize worth the striving for to the death? And whether it have not been the calamity of the Church, when two such extraordinary men, far above the common rank of Bishops, shall set an Empire and almost all the Christian Churches into Schism, Contention, mutual Persecution and Confusion, by so long striving Who shall be greatest?1 and drawing so many hundred Bishops into Faction, Schism, Perjury, and shameful mutations with them? And whether Christ did not (foreseeing such things) far otherwise decide this question, Who shall be greatest? in Luke 22. But if Pride turned Angels into Devils, it is not much to be wondered, if it turn the Angels of the Churches into the Ministers of the Prince of Pride and Darkness, and turn many Churches into a Theatre of Contention, and a Field of War.
§ 64. And now Reader, I leave it to thy judgment, whether Gregory Nazianzen knew not what he said, when he wisht there were no [higher and lower] among Bishops; and when he spake so much of their ambition, levity and temerity, and of the evil effects of their Councils in his time. Whether Patriarchal dignity was not a great temptation, when to the Son of a Prince on one side, and to the great and noble Secretary of the Emperor on the other side, it seemed a prize worth the striving for to the death? And whether it have not been the calamity of the Church, when two such extraordinary men, far above the common rank of Bishops, shall set an Empire and almost all the Christian Churches into Schism, Contention, mutual Persecution and Confusion, by so long striving Who shall be greatest?1 and drawing so many hundred Bishops into Faction, Schism, Perjury, and shameful mutations with them? And whether Christ did not (foreseeing such things) far otherwise decide this question, Who shall be greatest? in