A27050:1280
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 7: More Proofs of the aforesaid Limits of Churches.
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.
II. The very name Ecclesia which was first used before Parochi• or Dioecesis, and still continued to this day, doth show what the form of a Church then was, especially if you withal consider, that the name was communicated to the Temples or sacred Meeting-Places, which are also ordinarily called Ecclesiae; which no Man doubteth was in a secondary sense, as derived from the People, who were the Ecclesia in the primary sense. And so even in our Tongue, the word Church is used for both to this day, as i• is in many other Languages. Now it is certain that a part, especially a small part, (a hundredth or a thousandth part) of the Church is not the Church (unless equivocally.) Why then should the Temple be so called from the Church, when no Church at all, but a Particle only of a Church doth meet there? (For that the word Church] in our Question is not taken for any Community or Company of Christians, but for a governed Society consisting of the governing and governed part, I have before showed.) But, 1. A Church in its first and proper Notion being Coetus Evecatus, An Assembly, or Convention or Congregation; (as distinguished from the Universal Church, which is so called because it is called out of the World to Christ the Head, and with him shall make one glorious Society,) how are those twenty or an hundred Miles off, any more a part of the Assembly where I live, than those at the Antipodes may be? If you fly to one Governor, I answer; 1. So the Pope claimeth a Government at the Antipodes. 2. A Governor of many Assemblies may make them one Society, as to Government, but not one Assembly.
II. The very name Ecclesia which was first used before Parochi• or Dioecesis, and still continued to this day, doth shew what the form of a Church then was, especially if you withal consider, that the name was communicated to the Temples or sacred Meeting-Places, which are also ordinarily called Ecclesiae; which no Man doubteth was in a secondary sense, as derived from the People, who were the Ecclesia in the primary sense. And so even in our Tongue, the word Church is used for both to this day, as i• is in many other Languages. Now it is certain that a part, especially a small part, (a hundredth or a thousandth part) of the Church is not the Church (unless equivocally.) Why then should the Temple be so called from the Church, when no Church at all, but a Particle only of a Church doth meet there? (For that the word Church] in our Question is not taken for any Community or Company of Christians, but for a governed Society consisting of the governing and governed part, I have before shewed.) But, 1. A Church in its first and proper Notion being Coetus Evecatus, An Assembly, or Convention or Congregation; (as distinguished from the Universal Church, which is so called because it is called out of the World to Christ the Head, and with him shall make one glorious Society,) how are those twenty or an hundred Miles off, any more a part of the Assembly where I live, than those at the Antipodes may be? If you fly to one Governor, I answer; 1. So the Pope claimeth a Government at the Antipodes. 2. A Governor of many Assemblies may make them one Society, as to Government, but not one Assembly.