A27050:262
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.
76. And we hold that it was the modelling of the Church to the Policy of the Roman Empire, which gave the Pope the advantage for this usurpation: And that the Roman Catholic Papal Church is a mee• Humane Form, and an Imperial Church, as much as the Archbishop of Canterbury as Superior to the rest of England is of Man, and that Body so united is a National Church: And that the General Councils were never truly General, as to all the Churches in the World▪ but only as to the Roman Imperial Church; None considerable ever coming to such Councils, but those that were or had been in the Roman Empire, or some very few that closely bordered on them: Nor had the Roman Emperor (who usually called, or gave his Warrant for such Councils, or Governed them) any power over the Clergy of all the rest of the Christian World, (in Ethiopia, the outer Armenia, Persia, India, &c.) Nor did the Imperial Pope then exercise any power over them. And we are persuaded that the power of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and of the Metropolita••, Primates, &c. stood on the same foundation with the Primacy of the Pope, and that one is no more of Divine right than the other; ⟨p. 43⟩But that the Papacy is the far more wicked Usurpation, as pretending to more of Christ's Prerogative.
76. And we hold that it was the modelling of the Church to the Policy of the Roman Empire, which gave the Pope the advantage for this usurpation: And that the Roman Catholick Papal Church is a mee• Humane Form, and an Imperial Church, as much as the Archbishop of Canterbury as Superiour to the rest of England is of Man, and that Body so united is a National Church: And that the General Councils were never truly General, as to all the Churches in the World▪ but only as to the Roman Imperial Church; None considerable ever coming to such Councils, but those that were or had been in the Roman Empire, or some very few that closely bordered on them: Nor had the Roman Emperour (who usually called, or gave his Warrant for such Councils, or Governed them) any power over the Clergy of all the rest of the Christian World, (in Ethiopia, the outer Armenia, Persia, India, &c.) Nor did the Imperial Pope then exercise any power over them. And we are perswaded that the power of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and of the Metropolita, Primates, &c. stood on the same foundation with the Primacy of the Pope, and that one is no more of Divine right than the other;