A27050:235
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.
50. Whether God himself hath appointed another sort of Bishops who may be better called Archbishops, as Successors of the Apostles in the ⟨p. 37⟩Ruling part of their Office; and whether these have not a Power above particular Church Pastors in Ordinations, and in the oversight of the Pastors themselves, and in the Care of many Churches, I have long ago confessed, is a Case of too much difficulty for me to determine. On the one side, though the Apostles have no Successors in the extraordinary and temporary part of their Office, yet Church-government being an ordinary and permanent part, as doctrine is, I can hardly think that when we find one Form of Church-government instituted by Christ himself, and continuing till the end of that Age, that we should presume to say that this Form then ceased and another must succeed it without good proof. What we find enacted and settled must stand, till we can prove it abrogate. And unless it were a thing which in the nature of it were temporary, it seemeth a harsh imputation of mutability, to feign Christ to set up a Church-government which should be in force but for an hundred years. And on the other side it puzzleth me, 1. to find it so hard to prove, that the Apostles themselves did indeed exercise any Office power over other Pastors, which one may not do towards another, over and above that which accrued to them from the mere extraordinary advantage of their gifts and Apostolical proper work: 2. And to find it so obscure, whether they settled any as their Successors in that superiority of power which they had.
50. Whether God himself hath appointed another sort of Bishops who may be better called Archbishops, as Successors of the Apostles in the ⟨p. 37⟩Ruling part of their Office; and whether these have not a Power above particular Church Pastors in Ordinations, and in the oversight of the Pastors themselves, and in the Care of many Churches, I have long ago confessed, is a Case of too much difficulty for me to determine. On the one side, though the Apostles have no Successors in the extraordinary and temporary part of their Office, yet Church-government being an ordinary and permanent part, as doctrine is, I can hardly think that when we find one Form of Church-government instituted by Christ himself, and continuing till the end of that Age, that we should presume to say that this Form then ceased and another must succeed it without good proof. What we find enacted and setled must stand, till we can prove it abrogate. And unless it were a thing which in the nature of it were temporary, it seemeth a harsh imputation of mutability, to feign Christ to set up a Church-government which should be in force but for an hundred years. And on the other side it puzleth me, 1. to find it so hard to prove, that the Apostles themselves did indeed exercise any Office power over other Pastors, which one may not do towards another, over and above that which accrewed to them from the meer extraordinary advantage of their gifts and Apostolical proper work: 2. And to find it so obscure, whether they settled any as their Successors in that superiority of power which they had.