A26975:240
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.
II. When the Essentials of the Office are owned, but the exercise sinfully restrained. This the Old English Canons and Bishops were guilty of. But it unhappily was by fitting their Canons to the State of the Parish Priests that came newly out of Popery, and were by ignorance and error unfit for their Office and Work.
II. When the Essentials of the Office are owned, but the exercise sinfully restrained. This the Old English Canons and Bishops were guilty of. But it unhappily was by fitting their Canons to the State of the Parish Priests that came newly out of Popery, and were by ignorance and errour unfit for their Office and Work.
But of all this I treated with unquestionable evidence of Truth in my Treatise of Episcopacy, which is yet unanswered.
§ 34. Those that only abusively restrain the Parish Pastors in the exercise of their Offices, and are but misgoverning Diocesans, may yet be owned as true Ministers de specie tho we must not own their sinful Misgovernment: But those that destroy the very Office of the Parish Pastors in any essential part, and their Churches, are no true Ministers of Christ de specie, nor to be owned as such while they will be the sole Pastors of many hundred Congregations.