A27050:228
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.
43. To make a new sort of Church-Heads or Rulers, as their Constitutive parts, is to make a new sort of Churches.
44. The three foresaid Essential parts of the Pastoral Office are not to be exercised by any Lay-man, nor by any man that hath not that Office: Nor may the Pastors do that work per alios, or delegate Lay-men, or men of another Office to do it as in their stead. For the Office is nothing but just Authority and Obligation to do that work: And if they convey such Authority and Obligation to another, they convey the Office to another; And so he is no longer a Lay-man, or of another Office only.
44. The three forsaid Essential parts of the Pastoral Office are not to be exercised by any Lay-man, nor by any man that hath not that Office: Nor may the Pastors do that work per alios, or delegate Lay-men, or men of another Office to do it as in their stead. For the Office is nothing but just Authority and Obligation to do that work: And if they convey such Authority and Obligation to another, they convey the Office to another; And so he is no longer a Lay-man, or of another Office only.
45. Therefore though many Pastors of the same Office may in a great Church distribute the work among them, yet none of them must do it only as the delegate of another, not having himself from God the Office which containeth the power of doing it.