A27050:113
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.
2. As these Apostles preached the Gospel themselves, and planted Churches, so did many others as their helpers, partly the seventy sent by Christ, and partly called by the Apostles themselves; And all these exercised indefinitely a preparing Ministry, before particular Churches were gathered abroad the World, and afterwards went on in gathering and calling more.
3. Besides this preparing unfixed Ministration, the same Apostles also1 placed, by the peoples consent, particular fixed Ministers over all the several Churches which they gathered.
4. These fixed Ministers as such, they named indifferently, Bishops, Elders, Pastors and Teachers. Whereas those of the same Office in general yet unfixed, are called either by the General name of Christ's Ministers, or Stewards of his Mysteries; And in regard of their special works, some were called Apostles, some Prophets, and some Evangelists.