A27050:1387
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.
2. Now the ends of our Diocesan Churches are not one of all these. For 1. Their Communion is internal in Faith and Love; such as we have with the Abassines. 2. It is distant only, and not presential at all: For as Diocesan we never see each other it's like in our whole lives. 3. It is not personal (as external and sensible) but only by the intervention of Delegates, Messengers, Officers or Synods of such. 4. It is only in eadem specie of public worship and sacred actions that we have Communion, but not in the same Individual actions of worship: And so we may have Communion with the Antipodes, while we believe the same Scriptures and Creed, and use the same Sacraments, &c. in specie. 5. We have no converse with one another at all as Diocesan: (though as Parochial we may)▪ we never meet together, pray together, hear together, exhort or watch over or help each other: If a Brother trespass we tell him not of his fault, &c. for we never know one of five hundred in the Diocese, no more than men of another Country. 6. We hear not the same Teachers; we have not the same Guides to resolve our doubts, and to instruct us as we need; We have not the same Priests to join with in Gods public worship: But he that Teacheth and officiateth in one Church, hath no power in another: Only we have the same Bishop to call (not the people before him to teach and warn and comfort them, but) the Parson and Churchwardens; or rather the same Lay-Chancellor and his Court, and the same Canons (for silencing our Ministers, Excommunicating many conscionable Nonconformists, &c.) which not only all the Diocese hath, but all the Land. Not one of many hundreds of the Diocese ever seeth the Bishop in all his life. 7. A Diocese is it self a compound of particular Churches associated (Though mortified quantum in Diocesanis;) And therefore cannot be a constitutive part of such a first order of Association, as a particular Church may be or is. These are the differences in the Ends.
2. Now the ends of our Diocesane Churches are not one of all these. For 1. Their Communion is internal in Faith and Love; such as we have with the Abassines. 2. It is distant only, and not presential at all: For as Diocesane we never see each other it's like in our whole lives. 3. It is not personal (as external and sensible) but only by the intervention of Delegates, Messengers, Officers or Synods of such. 4. It is only in eadem specie of publick worship and sacred actions that we have Communion, but not in the same Individual actions of worship: And so we may have Communion with the Antipodes, while we believe the same Scriptures and Creed, and use the same Sacraments, &c. in specie. 5. We have no converse with one another at all as Diocesane: (though as Parochial we may) we never meet together, pray together, hear together, exhort or watch over or help each other: If a Brother trespass we tell him not of his fault, &c. for we never know one of five hundred in the Diocese, no more than men of another Countrey. 6. We hear not the same Teachers; we have not the same Guides to resolve our doubts, and to instruct us as we need; We have not the same Priests to joyn with in Gods publick worship: But he that Teacheth and officiateth in one Church, hath no power in another: Only we have the same Bishop to call (not the people before him to teach and warn and comfort them, but) the Parson and Churchwardens; or rather the same Lay-Chancellor and his Court, and the same Canons (for silencing our Ministers, Excommunicating many conscionable Nonconformists, &c.) which not only all the Diocese hath, but all the Land. Not one of many hundreds of the Diocese ever seeth the Bishop in all his life. 7. A Diocese is it self a compound of particular Churches associated (Though mortified quantum in Diocesanis;) And therefore cannot be a constitutive part of such a first order of Association, as a particular Church may be or is. These are the differences in the Ends.