A27050:1053
A treatise of episcopacy confuting by Scripture, reason, and the churches testimony that sort…
A treatise of episcopacy confuting by Scripture, reason, and the churches testimony that sort of diocesan churches, prelacy and government, which casteth out the primitive church-species, episcopacy, ministry and discipline and confoundeth the Christian world by corruption, usurpation, schism and persecution : meditated in the year 1640, when the et cætera oath was imposed : written 1671 and cast by : published 1680 by the importunity of our superiors, who demand the reasons of our nonconformity / by Richard Baxter.A treatise of episcopacy confuting by Scripture, reason, and the churches testimony that sort of diocesan churches, prelacy and government, which casteth out the primitive church-species, episcopacy, ministry and discipline and confoundeth the Christian world by corruption, usurpation, schism and persecution : meditated in the year 1640, when the et cætera oath was imposed : written 1671 and cast by : published 1680 by the importunity of our superiours, who demand the reasons of our nonconformity / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Simmons, 1681
Part 2 › Chapter 5: The same proved by the full Testimony of Antiquity.
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.
1. If by the Altar they say is meant [One Christ,] 2. or one Species of Altars, these are before confuted, and are palpably false. He that is in another part of the World may come to an Altar of the same species, which is nothing to the unity of a particular Church here spoken of. 3. If they say, It is called one Altar because under one Bishop, this maketh not many to be one, no more than many Temples. And if tropically it were so meant, it would be but a vain repetition, One Bishop being mentioned besides. And it is an Altar which the Bishop with his Presbytery is supposed to be present at, which cannot be All in a Diocese called One. Partiality can give no other probable sense.
1. If by the Altar they say is meant [One Christ,] 2. or one Species of Altars, these are before confuted, and are palpably false. He that is in another part of the World may come to an Altar of the same species, which is nothing to the unity of a particular Church here spoken of. 3. If they say, It is called one Altar because under one Bishop, this maketh not many to be one, no more than many Temples. And if tropically it were so meant, it would be but a vain repetition, One Bishop being mentioned besides. And it is an Altar which the Bishop with his Presbytery is supposed to be present at, which cannot be All in a Diocess called One. Partiality can give no other probable sense.
Object. 1. One Church it is known had many Altars.
Answ. Not then; no nor long after except at Rome and Alexandria: and then they were but as parts of Chapels, and not of Churches.
Answ. Not then; no nor long after except at Rome and Alexandria: and then they were but as parts of Chappels, and not of Churches.