A27050:239
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.
54. And here I must take occasion to say, that I take unnecessary Subscriptions, Declarations, Promises and Oaths, to be one of the chiefest of the Devil's Engines, to divide Christ's Churches, and to fish out those Ministers that make conscience of perjury and lying, and to turn them out of the work of Christ, and to leave in those that do not, (when Conscience can find but any shifting pretence;) And how fit such are for the Sacred Ministry, and whose servants really they are, and how they are like to do Christ's work, and what a Case the Churches will be in that have such, and what the effects will be with the common people, and how the lovers of Godliness will resent all this, and what else will follow hereupon, I leave to the Reader that hath the brains of a man, or ever opened his eyes to mark what is done abroad in the World, or that ever read with observation the things that in other Ages have befallen the Churches, or that knoweth what relation light hath to darkness, good to evil, and Christ to Belial. I think that the Articles of our Faith and the matters of our practice are so to be distinguished, as that there is a necessity of Believing the former, and therefore we may be called to profess that we do Believe them; And for the other, (the Agenda) we must be called to Do them, (and if they be plain and necessary duties of our Religion, being to be Believed to be Duties before we do them, we may sometime be put to profess that Belief.) But duties of humane imposition, or of doubtful nature, may be done as things lawful by thousands of peaceable men, that cannot say or swear that they are duties; or may be done as of humane obligation by those that cannot say they are of Divine obligation.
55. We hold that the first Churches that did devolve all arbitrations of differences among Christians upon the Pastors, did that which brought no great present inconvenience, when the People were but few and the Pastors had sufficient leisure; but that which prepared for the degenerating of the Ministry and the Churches lamentable corruption; And therefore that they should have foreseen this, and done as St. Paul directed them, and referred matters to any fit [wise man among them.] And when they saw the mischief, they should have quickly reformed it, as Silvanus Bishop of Troas aforementioned did: And that if there were Lay Elders in any of the ancient Churches, (as one passage in Origen, and one in Ambrose, and this of Silvanus in Socrates have made some think) they were truly Lay, and appointed only to such Arbitrations as these, and such other Animadversions over the rest, as Lay-men may do; (A help that I once tried and found to be very great.)