A27050:156
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.
But this was but one good Bishop that was so wise and honest; and therefore it proved no general reformation.
This Judicial power went so far and took up so much of the Clergies time, that the Synod Taraconens. was after this put to Decree, Can. 4. that the Clergy should not judge Causes on the Lords day; and Can. 10. that no Bishop or Clergy-man should take rewards or bribes for Judgments.
And the Canons so deterred Christians from seeking Justice from the Civil Judicatures, that they had few but Heathens to be Judges of. Yea the Christians thought so hardly of the Judges themselves (for punishing men by the Sword, when the Bishops even for murder it self did punish them but with Penance,) that they doubted sometime whether those Christians that exercised Magistracy or Civil Judgment after Baptism, were not therefore to be taken for sinners; as is visible in Innocent 1. his Epist. to Epist. 3. to Exuper. Tholesan. cap. 3. in Crab. Tom. 1. p. 459.
And the Canons so deterred Christians from seeking Justice from the Civil Judicatures, that they had few but Heathens to be Judges of. Yea the Christians thought so hardly of the Judges themselves (for punishing men by the Sword, when the Bishops even for murder it self did punish them but with Penance,) that they doubted sometime whether those Christians that exercised Magistracy or Civil Judgment after Baptisme, were not therefore to be taken for sinners; as is visible in Innocent 1. his Epist. to Epist. 3. to Exuper. Tholesan. cap. 3. in Crab. Tom. 1. p. 459.