A27050:344
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.
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.
His third Reason is, that the Distribution of the Churches usually followed the division of the Common wealth.
Ans. 1. If so (as is said) they must be various and mutable. All the World was not divided just as the Roman Empire was: And the Imperial divisions had great changes. 2. I think it lost labour to dispute with him that holdeth this assimilating the Church to the Civil Form, was of Divine Apostolical Institution. If any can think so, let him give us his proof that the Church Constitution must vary as Monarchical, Aristocratical and Democratical States do; As Empires and free Cities do: And that from the King to the Constable, we must have a correspondent Officer: And that the Papacy as Capital in the Roman Empire, was of Gods Institution. And that an Emperor, King, or popular State may change the Form of the Churches, as oft as they may the Form of their subordinate Governments. Are not these small Reasons to prove, that when the Apostles planted Bishops in all single Churches, they intended that those Bishops should be the sole Bishops of many hundred Churches, when they should be raised in the Circuit of ground, which now is called their Dioceses. But more of this in due place.