A27050:443
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.
8. The Second Power which the Presbyter must receive from the Prelate for Teaching, Worshipping, and Governing the Plock, is either, 1. For the exercise of it in General to any fit persons, or else for the limitation of him to such a particular Flock. 2. And it is either a General License or power at once given to do all his Work, or to do this of Government whenever there is cause, or else it is a particular License for each particular act.
1. We deny not, but that as a Physician Licensed to practice, is not thereby made the Physician of this or that Person, Hospital or City, but have a particular Call for such an Exercise or Application of his skill. So an Ordained Minister of Christ hath no prepared Object on which to Exercise a Pastoral Office, but by a particular Call to such a Flock. But however you Censure our simplicity for it, we are resolved to believe, till you say more against it, 1. That the same may be said of a Bishop too; and therefore by your Argument, when this Bishop is fixed in a particular Flock, he receiveth a second power as you call it, and so without it hath not the power of the Keys any more than the Presbyter; and so must be of a distinct Order from the Bishops that give him his second power: And who giveth them theirs? And if▪ you rise to a Patriarch or Pope, what Superior of another Order giveth them their second Power? 2. That institution or fixing a man (before Ordained) to a particular Flock, doth not make him of another Order or Office, nor is a new Ordination; nor is he as oft Ordained and made of another Office, as he changeth his Flock, or receiveth a new License from the Bishop or the King, (from whom I had rather have it.) 3. That the People as well as the Bishop (if not much more) do give the Minister this opportunity for the exercise of his Office, (as the Patient chooseth his Physician.) And yet it is my Opinion that this will not prove that the People are his Governors, much less that they give him a new Order or Office. And of old the People chose their Bishops themselves: It will be as much honour for you Learnedly to prove that there were no Kings in the World till Bishops made them, as to confute D. Blondels Historical proof of the Peoples ancient choice of their Bishops.