Mr. Richard Baxter's last legacy in select admonitions and directions to all sober dissenters

Page 832. of Mr. Baxter's Directory, Q. 56. Mr. Baxter tells you in the Margin of those Reasons for a larger Episcopacy, That in the Apostles Days there were under Christ in the Universal Church, many general Officers that had the care ⟨p. 45⟩of gathering and over-seeing Churches up and down, and were fixed by stated Relation unto none. And most Christian Churches think, that though the extraordinary Gifts, Privileges and Officers cease, yet Government being an ordinary part of their Work, the same Form of Government which Christ and the Holy Ghost did settle in the first Ages, tho' not with the same extraordinary Gifts and Adjuncts were settled for all following Ages: 1. Because we read of settling that Form, (viz.) general Officers as well as Particular, but never of any Abolition. 2. Because if we affirm a Cessation without Proof, we seem to accuse God of Mutability, as setting a Form of Government for one Age only. 3. And we leave room for audacious Wits to question other Gospel-Institutions, as Pastors, Sacraments, &c. 4. It was general Officers that Christ promised to be with to the end of the World, Matth. 28. 20. And in this Premonition he says, he doth not dispute the Lawfulness of Arch-Bishops, over Parochial-Bishops, as Successors to the Apostles, and other general Officers of the first Age, in the ordinary continued parts of their Office. And in his Plea for Peace, p. 263. Some of us incline much to think, that Arch-Bishops (i. e.) Bishops that have over-sight of many Churches, with their Pastors, are lawful Successors of the Apostles, in the ordinary part of their Work. So also, First Plea, p. 35. and of his accepting two parts of Episcopacy, not varying the Species in the Preface to the second Plea.

In Church-History, p. 37. and in Plea for Peace, p. 66. the Bishops in Cyprian's time had the best ordered Churches in the World; and the Bishops were the most Godly, Faithful, Peaceable company of Bishops since the Apostle's times. In Preface to the Second Plea, we offered Arch-Bishop Usher's Model, and when his Majesty would not grant us that, he prescribed the Episcopacy of England, as it stood with little Alteration, this we joyfully and thankfully accepted, as a hopeful means of a common Conformity and Concord.