A27050:253
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.
67. And indeed we are fully persuaded, that none but Volunteers are •it for the great privilege of Church-Communion, and that giving it to ⟨p. 41⟩the unwilling that had but rather endure it than a Prison, is a great profanation of it, and a cheat to poor souls, and a horrid corrupting of Christ's Churches and Ordinances.
67. And indeed we are fully perswaded, that none but Voluntiers are •it for the great priviledge of Church-Communion, and that giving it to ⟨p. 41⟩the unwilling that had but rather endure it than a Prison, is a great profanation of it, and a cheat to poor souls, and a horrid corrupting of Christ's Churches and Ordinances.
68. If wilful Church-corruptions have made any places uncapable of a present conformity to Christ's Institutions, their incapacity must not become the measure and rule of our Reformation; But a true Conformity to the Institution must be intended and endeavoured, though all cannot come up to it at the first.
69. We do not hold that every Corruption in Number, or Officers, or Order, nullifieth a Church, or maketh all Communion with it unlawful, as long as the essential constitution doth remain. Yea, though my own judgment is, that every Church in Town or Country should have a Bishop, yet if they would but set up one Bishop with his assistant Presbyters in every Corporation and Great Town, with the neighbour Villages, according to the ancient practise, from the middle of the third Century for many following; so that true discipline might but be made possible to them that had a heart to practice it, I should greatly rejoice in such a Reformation; much more, if every Parish Pastor were restored to all the parts of his Office, though he exercised all under the Government of Bishops.