A27050:1488
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.
Which is yet more apparent by those following Canons, which forbid the Bishop to Ordain without his Clergy, or to accuse any of them but by proof in a Synod, or to suffer a Presbyter to stand while he sitteth. And the Canons that place the Bishop in consessu Presbyterorum, and set him in the midst of them in the same seat in the Church, and call him their Colleague: The Canons which make the Presbyters Governors of the Rural Churches, and make the Deacons servants to them, of which the number is too great to be now recited—
Which is yet more apparent by those following Canons, which forbid the Bishop to Ordain without his Clergy, or to accuse any of them but by proof in a Synod, or to suffer a Presbyter to stand while he sitteth. And the Canons that place the Bishop in consessu Presbyterorum, and set him in the midst of them in the same seat in the Church, and call him their Colleague: The Canons which make the Presbyters Governours of the Rural Churches, and make the Deacons servants to them, of which the number is too great to be now recited—
Even here Can. 22. it's said [Episcopus sine Concilio Clerioorum suorum Clericos1 non ordinet: Ita ut Civium assensum & conniventiam & testimonium quaerat.] And if not sine concilio * then not contra consilium. And if the consent of the Laity be necessary, sure the Clergies is so too.
- 1Note it is not consilio but concilio.
Can. 29. Episcopus si Clerico vel Laico crimen imposuerit, deducatur ad probationem in Synodum. Can. 30. Caveant Judices Ecclesiae ne absent eo cujus causa ventilatur sententiam proferant; quia irrita erit, imo & causam in Synodo profacto dabunt. And if a Bishop must not so much as accuse but in a Synod on proof, much less might he be judge alone.