A26975:322
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
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. I therefore penitently confess that I was long aversly suspicious of National Churches, and National Church-Governors, because I could not see how those that held these could confute Popery: For I thought that by the same reason that Presbyters must have Bishops over them, and Bishops, Arch-Bishops, and they Metropolitans or Patriarchs; these also must have some body over them, to Ordain them, and to Govern them. And because I denied the latter, I denied also the former, and thought Episcopacy would infer Popery.
§ 2. I therefore penitently confess that I was long aversly suspicious of National Churches, and National Church-Goververnours, because I could not see how those that held these could confute Popery: For I thought that by the same reason that Presbyters must have Bishops over them, and Bishops, Arch-Bishops, and they Metropolitans or Patriarchs; these also must have some body over them, to Ordain them, and to Govern them. And because I denied the latter, I denied also the former, and thought Episcopacy would infer Popery.
§ 3. And lest any should fall by the like temptation, and Papists should plead my Principles as for them, or should infer that if National Churches and Prelacy be Jure Divino, Universal Church Sovereignty is so also, I shall here tell those that may have the like temptations, how I escaped this: And I will add the rest of the difficulties that ever seemed to me to be of considerable weight to tempt an impartial man to Popery, and tell the less studied how to answer them better than the most can do.
§ 3. And lest any should fall by the like temptation, and Papists should plead my Principles as for them, or should infer that if National Churches and Prelacy be Jure Divino, Universal Church Soveraignty is so also, I shall here tell those that may have the like temptations, how I escaped this: And I will add the rest of the difficulties that ever seemed to me to be of considerable weight to tempt an impartial man to Popery, and tell the less studied how to answer them better than the most can do.