A27050:204
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.
20. Though in the Nature of the Office all Christs Ministers have the Power before mentioned, (1. to convert men to the Faith by preaching, 2. to take them into the holy Covenant and Church by Baptism, 3. to teach, worship and rule, in particular Churches; or, 1. to gather Churches by preaching and baptizing, 2. and then to teach and guide them;) Yet all are not called equally to the exercise of all these parts; But some were by the Apostles and the Holy Ghost indefinitely employed in an unfixed course, in converting men and gathering Churches; yet officiating also in gathered Churches where they came; And others were fixed in the stated relation of Pastors to particular gathered Churches, to teach and rule them, and worship among them; yet so as also to Preach for the conversion of unbelievers, as far as they had ability and opportunity.
21. The unfixed Officers were called Ministers in General, and Stewards of God's Mysteries, and Evangelists: But the fixed Officers, were also especially called Bishops, Pastors, and Elders: Though sometime •arely the other also had such Titles, because of their doing the same work transiently in the Churches where they came.
22. They that were unfixed Preachers or Evangelists, had not that special and particular Charge of all the souls in particular Churches, and in some one Church above all the rest, as fixed Bishops or Pastors have: But they had a greater Obligation than these Bishops to preach to Infidels, because it was their ordinary chief work.