A26898:164
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 1
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.
(Twelve was the number of their Presbyters by their ancient Constitution, and seven of their Deacons as appears by Eutychius, here and at Rome, and elsewhere) six Presbyters with Arius, and five Deacons fell off from the Catholics, Sozom. Hist. li. 1. c. 14. But let the Arians be much fewer, yet will not the proportion of the Catholic Bishops part in this City be more than that of a small ⟨p. 11⟩Town, one of eight or twelve Furlongs in compass. And so the number of Christians on this account will be no more than might well meet for Worship in one place.
(Twelve was the number of their Presbyters by their ancient Constitution, and seven of their Deacons as appears by Eutychius, here and at Rome, and elsewhere) six Presbyters with Arius, and five Deacons fell off from the Catholicks, Sozom. Hist. li. 1. c. 14. But let the Arians be much fewer, yet will not the proportion of the Catholick Bishops part in this City be more than that of a small ⟨p. 11⟩Town, one of eight or twelve Furlongs in compass. And so the number of Christians on this account will be no more than might well meet for Worship in one place.
If the Reader will peruse Epiphanius History of the Fraction between Alexander and the Followers of Meletius in Alexandria, how Alexander was impatient with their separate Meetings, when Meletius was dead (though till then two Bishops and Churches lived quietly in one City) because they came not to his Church; with the rest of the story, he will easily see what a Church was then even in Alexandria.
Thus you see the difference of a just computation, and the hasty accounts of men, that judg of Places and Persons as they are in their misled imaginations, and not as they were indeed and truth. Mr. Dodwell in a Letter to me layeth so much on the number of the Officers and Poor before mentioned, as if it proved undoubtedly a Diocesan Church, when the conclusion ariseth from an erroneous comparing their Cities and times with ours, and their Presbyters with our Parish-Priests and Curates.