A27050:1105
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.
Cap. 12. His peractis dextram & laevam ejus ut discipuli Magistro assistant.—This is part of the Common Rubric (of the best and eldest Liturgy that I know of recorded by Church History) for the celebrating the Sacrament. So that it supposeth a Bishop to be then present in all Churches that had an Altar and Sacrament. The rest of the Liturgy, lib. 8. supposeth still the same presence of the Bishop. Cap. 35. Congregabis Episcope Ecclesiam ad vesperam, &c. It would be too long to recite all the Bishops part in the ordinary Offices of the Assembly. It is hence plain that in those Ages (unless it were very few; perhaps only Rome and Alexandria) no Bishops had more stated Assemblies or Churches that had Altars, or communicated, than one.
Cap. 12. His peractis dextram & laevam ejus ut discipuli Magistro assistant.—This is part of the Common Rubrick (of the best and eldest Liturgy that I know of recorded by Church History) for the celebrating the Sacrament. So that it supposeth a Bishop to be then present in all Churches that had an Altar and Sacrament. The rest of the Liturgy, lib. 8. supposeth still the same presence of the Bishop. Cap. 35. Congregabis Episcope Ecclesiam ad vesperam, &c. It would be too long to recite all the Bishops part in the ordinary Offices of the Assembly. It is hence plain that in those Ages (unless it were very few; perhaps only Rome and Alexandria) no Bishops had more stated Assemblies or Churches that had Altars, or communicated, than one.
VIII. The Canons called the Apostles run just in the same strain with the Constitutions: And though by some of them it is apparent that (at least) all of them are not so old as many think, (As that which intimateth that Rulers set up Clergy-men, &c.) yet they were elder than our Compound Diocesan Churches. For Can. 5. It is said. [Omnium aliorum primitiae Episcopo & Presbyteris domum mittuntur; non super altare: Manifestum est autem quod Episcopus & Presbyteri inter Diaconos & reliquos Clericos eas dividunt.] By which and many such passages it is evident that there was then but one Altar and one Bishop with his Presbytery and Deacons in a Church, as in ⟨p. 36⟩