A27050:1205
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 6: The same further confirmed by the Ancients.
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.
And Nazianzum where he plaid the Bishop under his Father (two Bishops at once, one in Title, the other in Practice without Title) was but a small Town.
VIII. Basil an Arch-Bishop was so much against enlarging Dioceses, and taking in many Churches to one Bishop, that he taketh the advantage of the difference between him and Anthymius to make many Bishops more in his Diocese over small places: yea, it seemeth some places were so small as that they never before had any Pastors at all: as appeareth by Gregory Nazianzene, Epist. 28.
VIII. Basil an Arch-Bishop was so much against enlarging Dioceses, and taking in many Churches to one Bishop, that he taketh the advantage of the difference between him and Anthymius to make many Bishops more in his Diocess over small places: yea, it seemeth some places were so small as that they never before had any Pastors at all: as appeareth by Gregory Nazianzene, Epist. 28.
IX. Theodoret tells us, lib. 4. cap. 20. Hist. Eccles. that even in the great Alexandria the Presbyters and Deacons were all but nineteen when Lucius came to banish them to Heliopolis, a City of Phoenicia; which City had not one Christian in it. By which it appeareth, that even then under Christian Emperors, Christianity was not received by the multitude, when some Cities had not a Christian.