A26975:242
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.
§ 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.
§ 35. How came this General Episcopacy that was to gather and fix Churches to be so much ceased?
A. 1. By the difficulty and costliness of the work of Apostolic ⟨p. 25⟩Travels and Labours: Ministers chose the easier state of a fixed particular Ministry. 2. The particular Bishops living among Heathens, found work enough on those within their reach, and so by degrees conjoined the two Offices of General and Particular Episcopacy into one. 3. And when the Heathen near them were converted, ambition drew them to enlarge their Particular Churches into one Diocesan Church, instead of gathering the new Swarms into a new Hive, under a true particular Bishop. And thus Satan hath by subtlety, reduced the Churches to be too like to the Heathen World, by killing Religion, and turning it into Hypocritical Ceremony and mere Names, while one Bishop will needs undertake the work of many Score or Hundreds, which he cannot possibly perform.
A. 1. By the difficulty and costliness of the work of Apostolick ⟨p. 25⟩Travels and Labours: Ministers chose the easier state of a fixed particular Ministry. 2. The particular Bishops living among Heathens, found work enough on those within their reach, and so by degrees conjoined the two Offices of General and Particular Episcopacy into one. 3. And when the Heathen near them were converted, ambition drew them to enlarge their Particular Churches into one Diocesan Church, instead of gathering the new Swarms into a new Hive, under a true particular Bishop. And thus Satan hath by subtilty, reduced the Churches to be too like to the Heathen World, by killing Religion, and turning it into Hypocritical Ceremony and meer Names, while one Bishop will needs undertake the work of many Score or Hundreds, which he cannot possibly perform.