A27050:134
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.
23. Our own experience showeth us how it came to pass, that the people themselves not only consented to all this, but also desired and promoted it: (especially then when the effects of Clergy-ambition had not fully appeared to the World:) For even now when a great Parish can get one Learned able Pastor, they say, we will allow you so much, but your Curates must take less: And they will not endure that the young and weak Curates, have either equal maintenance, or equal honour or power ⟨p. 15⟩over them, as the chief Pastor of the Parish hath; so that the people themselves are against an equality of power, where there is not an equality of worth.
23. Our own experience sheweth us how it came to pass, that the people themselves not only consented to all this, but also desired and promoted it: (especially then when the effects of Clergy-ambition had not fully appeared to the World:) For even now when a great Parish can get one Learned able Pastor, they say, we will allow you so much, but your Curates must take less: And they will not endure that the young and weak Curates, have either equal maintenance, or equal honour or power ⟨p. 15⟩over them, as the chief Pastor of the Parish hath; so that the people themselves are against an equality of power, where there is not an equality of worth.
24. Though we cannot prove that this fixed Episcopacy was either set up by the Apostles, or countenanced by them, nor yet that it was begun and in being in their days; yet it could not be long after their days that it begun; And if Hierome mistake not, it began at Alexandria some years before the death of St. John the Apostle.