A27050:1230
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.
So To. 4. de Poenitent. l. 5. c. 15. Tota Ecclesia suscipit onus peccatoris cui compatiendum & fletu, & oratione & dolore est. By which it seems that all the Church (that is, so great a part as might be called all) was used to be present each meeting when Penitents lamented their sin.
And in To. 3. p. 183. in 1 Cor. 11. he saith, that the Angels before whom the Women in the Church must be veiled, are the Bishops as God's Vicars?] which intimateth that ordinarily every Church-Assembly was to have a Bishop present.
And ibid. Hoc notat qui sic in Ecclesiam conveniebant, ut munera sua offerentes advenientibus Presbyteris, quia adhuc rectores Ecclesiis non omnibus locis fuerant constituti, &c. And p. 161. in Rom. 1. 2. Propterea Ecclesiae scribit, quia adhuc singulis Ecclesiis Rectores non erant instituti. By which you may conjecture what he thought of the magnitude of Churches then.