A27050:243
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.
58. We hold that it was sinfully done, to make a new Office or Order of subject Presbyters, that had not the Governing power of their particular Churches, neither alone, nor conjunct; but had only the power to Teach and Worship, the Government being reserved only to the Bishop of another (called a Mother) Church.
58. We hold that it was sinfully done, to make a new Office or Order of subject Presbyters, that had not the Governing power of their perticular Churches, neither alone, nor conjunct; but had only the power to Teach and Worship, the Government being reserved only to the Bishop of another (called a Mother) Church.
59. But we believe that this came not in till many hundred Years after Christ, and that but by slow degrees, and that after subordinate Churches and Altars were invented, and set up, yet the Pastors under the name of Presbyters, had much of the Governing power (of the Keys) though with and under the Bishop of the Mother Church.
60. The deposing of all the first rank or Order of Bishops, which were before over each particular Church, the making of a new Office of half Presbyters, the making of Churches of a new species, as being under a new sort of Officers, the making Archbishops, who should have many Churches and Bishops under them, to become the Bishops of the lowest rank, having none under them; but above all these, the making of the Pastoral work, especially discipline become utterly impossible, by putting that into one mans hand, that cannot be done but by many (or many hundred,) these and such like are the things that we can neither swear to nor approve.