A27050:1254
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.
XXXII. Sozomen (after Socrates) mentioning the diversity of Church Customs (as aforesaid) l. 7. c. 19. saith, that at Alexandria the Arch-Deacon only readeth the Holy Scriptures, in other places only the Deacons, and in many Churches only the Priests, and on solemn days the Bishops.] By which words it appeareth that then every Church was supposed to have a Bishop, Priests and Deacons present in their public Worship. For the Bishop on his solemn days could not be reading in many Churches (much less many hundred) at once.
XXXII. Sozomen (after Socrates) mentioning the diversity of Church Customs (as aforesaid) l. 7. c. 19. saith, that at Alexandria the Arch-Deacon only readeth the Holy Scriptures, in other places only the Deacons, and in many Churches only the Priests, and on solemn days the Bishops.] By which words it appeareth that then every Church was supposed to have a Bishop, Priests and Deacons present in their publick Worship. For the Bishop on his solemn days could not be reading in many Churches (much less many hundred) at once.
XXXIII. Histor. Tripartit. l. 1. c. 19. (out of Sozomen, l. 1. c. 14. Edit. Lat. Basil. p. 1587.) telleth us, how Arius seeketh (as from the Bithynian Synod) to Paulinus of Tyre, Euseb. Caesar. & Patroph. Scythopol. ut una cum suis juberetur cum populo qui cum eo erat, solennia Sacramenta Ecclesiae celebrare,—Esse dicens consuetudinem in Alexandria (sicut etiam nunc) ut uno existente super omnes Episcopo, Presbyteri scorsim Ecclesias obtinerent, & populus in eis C••••ctas solemniter celebraret.—] [Tunc illi una cum aliis Episcopis, &c.] By this (with what is said before out of Epiphanius) it is undeniable that this (gathering of Assemblies by the Presbyters in the same City, and administering the Sacrament to them besides the Church where the Bishop was) was taken to be Alexandria's singularity, even as low as Sozomen's time. And yet note that here is even at Alexandria no mention of many Churches in the Countries at a distance, much ⟨p. 57⟩less hundreds, thus gathered, but only of some few in that great City. And if even in a great City, and in Epiphan. and in Sozomen's days a Presbyter's Church was an Alexandrian Rarity, what need we more Historical Evidence of the Case of the Churches in those times?