A27050:118
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.
7. While they stayed in these newly planted Churches they were themselves the chief Guides of the People: And also of their fixed Bishops.
8. This abode in settling the particular Churches and their particular Bishops or Elders, occasioned Historians, afterward to call both Apostles and Evangelists (such as Timothy, Titus, Silas, Silvanus, Luke, Apollo, &c.) the Bishops of those Churches; though they were not such as the fixed Bishops were, who undertook a special Charge and care of one particular Church alone, or above all other Churches.
9. On this account the same Apostle is said to be the first Bishop of many Churches; (as Peter of Antioch, and Rome; Paul of Corinth, Ephesus Philippi, &c.) When indeed the Apostles were the particular fixed Bishops of no Churches, but the Bishops equally of many, as a sort of unfixed Episcopacy is included in Apostleship.
10. On this account also it is that Timothy is said to be Bishop of Ephesus, because he was left there for a time to settle that and other Churches of Asia near it, as an Assistant of the Apostles: And so Titus is called the Bishop of Crete, because he staid in that Island (which was said to have an hundred Cities) on this work, which belonged not to a particular Bishop, but to the more indefinite Ministry.