A26975:214
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied…
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied to England / written by Richard Baxter for promoting peace ... and for the fuller explication of the Treaty for Concord in 1660 and 1661, and of the Kings gracious declaration about ecclesiastical affairs ... and for further explication of his treatise of episcopacy ...
London: printed by T. Snowden for Thomas Parkhurst, 1691
Chapter 5: Of Pastors or the Bishops of National Churches, that they are to be of Three ranks.
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.
2. It is a charging Christ with temerity or dishonourable mutability, as Instituting one form of Church Ministry and Government for one Age, and changing it presently for another.
3. It seemeth a dangerous taking Gods Name in vain, by affirming such a mutability of him, and change of his Laws, without any proof.
4. It defameth the state of his Church when it was under Persecution, and when Heaven and Earth after rejoiced in its deliverance, as if all that time it had been corrupt by owning the foresaid Disparity. And it's dangerous Presumption to Father on God that which he never did, and never owned.
§ 21. But no doubt but the Circumstances of this Superior Office or degree of Ministry, are undetermined by God (save as by General Rules) and may be altered.