A27050:1064
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.
The Epistles ascribed to him have much of the like kind; as Epist. ad Tarsenses, pag. 80. Ad Antiochenos, pag. 86, 87, 88. The Epist. ad Heroum Diaconum calleth the Presbyters of Antioch Bishops who baptize, sacrifice and impose hands.
So Epist. ad Philippenses, pag. 112.
If after all this evidence from Ignatius any will wrangle, let him wrangle: what words can be plain enough for such? And what a blind or blinding practice is it, which too many Writers for Prelacy have used? to pretend Ignatius to be for them, who is so much and plain against them? And to toss about the name of a Bishop and Presbytery, as if all that was said for a Parochial Bishop and Presbytery (that is, in a Church associated for personal presential Communion) were spoken for such a Diocesan Prelacy as putteth down and destroyeth all such Churches, Bishops and Presbyteries.
If after all this evidence from Ignatius any will wrangle, let him wrangle: what words can be plain enough for such? And what a blind or blinding practice is it, which too many Writers for Prelacy have used? to pretend Ignatius to be for them, who is so much and plain against them? And to toss about the name of a Bishop and Presbytery, as if all that was said for a Parochial Bishop and Presbytery (that is, in a Church associated for personal presential Communion) were spoken for such a Diocesane Prelacy as putteth down and destroyeth all such Churches, Bishops and Presbyteries.