A27050:109
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
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.
CHAP. III. Our Judgment of the History of the Ancient Church-Government, and of the rise of the Diocesan Prelacy.
CHAP. III. Our Judgment of the History of the Antient Church-Government, and of the rise of the Diocesan Prelacy.
I Shall anon show more fully, that there are two things especially in which we think the very Species of our Diocesan Prelacy to be altered from the ancient Episcopacy. One is in the Extent of their Office, as to their subject Charge, a Bishop infimae speciei, of the lowest species, having then but One Church, and now a Bishop infimae speciei having many hundred Churches made into one, or nullified to make One. 2. In the Work of their Office, which was then purely Spiritual or Pastoral, and is now mixed of Magistratical and Ministerial, exercised by mixed Officers in Courts much like to Civil Judicatures. The History of their rise I suppose is this.
I Shall anon shew more fully, that there are two things especially in which we think the very Species of our Diocesan Prelacy to be altered from the antient Episcopacy. One is in the Extent of their Office, as to their subject Charge, a Bishop infimae speciei, of the lowest species, having then but One Church, and now a Bishop infimae speciei having many hundred Churches made into one, or nullified to make One. 2. In the Work of their Office, which was then purely Spiritual or Pastoral, and is now mixt of Magistratical and Ministerial, exercised by mixed Officers in Courts much like to Civil Judicatures. The History of their rise I suppose is this.