A27050:343
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.
His next Reason is because [that division of Churches which was 300 or 400 Years after Christ, with their Limits and Circuits, were ordinarily the same which had been from the beginning, as divers Councils testify.
His next Reason is because [that division of Churches which was 300 or 400 Years after Christ, with their Limits and Circuits, were ordinarily the same which had been from the beginning, as divers Councils testifie.
Ans. Those Councils mean no more, than that it had been an old or settled Custom, (as many Learned men have proved.) And if they could be proved to mean that from the Apostolical plantations the bounds of all the Diocese were set, I marvel that any man could believe them. But they say no such thing, as were it not tedious to the Reader, an examination of each particular would show. Else no new Churches and Bishops must be settled in the World, but those that the Apostles converted in any Cities between or near them; For the unconverted Cities in the inter-spaces, were as much those Bishops Dioceses as the Villages of equal distance: And then the making of new Cities would have made one a Bishop of many Cities, contrary to the Canons.
Ans. Those Councils mean no more, than that it had been an old or setled Custome, (as many Learned men have proved.) And if they could be proved to mean that from the Apostolical plantations the bounds of all the Diocess were set, I marvel that any man could believe them. But they say no such thing, as were it not tedious to the Reader, an examination of each particular would shew. Else no new Churches and Bishops must be setled in the World, but those that the Apostles converted in any Cities between or near them; For the unconverted Cities in the inter-spaces, were as much those Bishops Diocesses as the Villages of equal distance: And then the making of new Cities would have made one a Bishop of many Cities, contrary to the Canons.