A27050:269
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.
CHAP. V. Concerning the Writers of this Controversy; With a Summary Answer to the Chief that write against the Cause which I defend.
CHAP. V. Concerning the Writers of this Controversie; With a Summary Answer to the Chief that write against the Cause which I defend.
I Have not been altogether negligent to read the Controversies on this Subject, nor I hope partial in Reading them; If I have, it hath been because I had rather have found Conformity to the Prelacy to be lawful; for then I had not above *nine years been silenced, and denied not only all Church maintenance, but leave to preach Christ's Gospel, nor had I been exposed as I have been to so much wrath and malice, expressed in so many scurrilous lying invectives and libels, besides other ways. Even when I doubted of the use of the transient Image of the Cross, I was of opinion that Prelacy was lawful, and so was likely to continue, if the Prelates would have given me leave: But in 1640, they put a New Oath upon us, Never to Consent to the Alteration of the present frame of Prelacy, as under Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, &c. and that it ought so to stand. And I thought it was then time, when I was put to such a solemn Oath, to search more throughly into all the matter before I sware. And in searching, I found in general that almost all Writers for Episcopacy, either confound Diocesan Prelacy, such as ours, with the Episcopacy of a single Church, or at least all their proof extendeth to no more than I have here granted. When they ⟨p. 45⟩offer us the definition of a Bishop (which few of them do) it is such as neither supposeth any more Churches than one to be his Charge, nor any Presbyters under him at all; but only a Power of Ordaining Presbyters, and ruling them when he hath them, whether in one Church or more.
I Have not been altogether negligent to read the Controversies on this Subject, nor I hope partial in Reading them; If I have, it hath been because I had rather have found Conformity to the Prelacy to be lawful; for then I had not above