A27050:154
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.
42. Whereas (as is aforesaid) the Christians had commonly stated the power of Arbitrating all their Civil differences in the Bishop alone (when the Apostle intimated that any Wise man among them, as such, was fit for that business) it grew presently to be accounted a heinous crime or scandal, for any Christians to go to Law, before the Civil Magistrate. And Constantine finding them in possession of this custom, did by his Edict confirm it and enlarge it: decreeing that all Bishops should be Judges of all the Christians causes by consent, and that no Civil Judge or Magistrate should compel any Christian to his bar: Insomuch that in Theodosius his days, when one of Ambrose his1 Presbyters had a cause to be tried, he denied himself to be a Christian, that he might have it decided by the Civil Magistrate, that was Christian also. So that even Christian Magistrates might not judge unwilling Christians but the Bishops only. Yet had not the Bishops then the power of the Sword, but decided all as Arbitrators, and enforced their Sentences with rigorous penances and Church-censures: By which means, 1. many the more turned Christians (without the Faith and Holiness of Christians) that they might both partake of the Christians honour and immunities, and specially that they might be free from corporal penalties ⟨p. 20⟩for their crimes. (And who would not do so, if it were now our case.) 2. And by this means the rigorous penalties of the Church by penances were the more easily submitted to, as being more easy than corporal pains and mulcts. And when thus by the Laws and countenance of so great an Emperor, the Bishops were made the Judges of all that were Christians at present, and all that would turn Christians that desired it, it is easy to understand, 1. what a Lordship they must needs have as to the kind of power; 2. How their Office must degenerate from purely spiritual, into secular or mixed: 3. And how numerous their Flocks, and large their Provinces would soon be.
42. Whereas (as is aforesaid) the Christians had commonly stated the power of Arbitrating all their Civil differences in the Bishop alone (when the Apostle intimated that any Wise man among them, as such, was fit for that business) it grew presently to be accounted a heynous crime or scandal, for any Christians to go to Law, before the Civil Magistrate. And Constantine finding them in possession of this custom, did by his Edict confirm it and enlarge it: decreeing that all Bishops should be Judges of all the Christians causes by consent, and that no Civil Judge or Magistrate should compel any Christian to his bar: Insomuch that in Theodosius his days, when one of Ambrose his