A27050:147
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.
36. The first that brake this Order were Alexandria and Rome, where Converts soon multiplied to a greater number than could meet in one place, or Communicate at one Altar: wherefore sub-assemblies with their particular Presbyters, were there first formed, who Communicated distinctly by themselves. (Though there is no proof that they Communicated there in the Sacrament of a long time after that they met for Preaching and Prayer.) Yet even in Rome and Alexandria the only places that had more than one stated Assembly for 200 years or more, there were not so many Christians then as in the Parish that I now live in; See more of my Proof in the beginning of my Church History abridged: whose first and second Chapters belogn specially to this Treatise, and therefore I must refer the Reader to them.
36. The first that brake this Order were Alexandria and Rome, where Converts soon multiplyed to a greater number than could meet in one place, or Communicate at one Altar: wherefore sub-assemblies with their particular Presbyters, were there first formed, who Communicated distinctly by themselves. (Though there is no proof that they Communicated there in the Sacrament of a long time after that they met for Preaching and Prayer.) Yet even in Rome and Alexandria the only places that had more than one stated Assembly for 200 years or more, there were not so many Christians then as in the Parish that I now live in; See more of my Proof in the beginning of my Church History abridged: whose first and second Chapters belogn specially to this Treatise, and therefore I must refer the Reader to them.
37. Even in Epiphanius time about 370 years after Christ, it is noted by him as a singularity in Alexandria, that they had distinct Assemblies besides the Bishops; whereupon Petavius himself largely giveth us notice, that in those days, except in a few very great Cities, there was but one Church-assembly in a Bishops charge.