A27050:457
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.
Cap. 2. Whether the [Greek or Hebrew], the Regeneration, be the New Church State, and the Apostles Episcopal Thrones be there meant, as settled in several Provinces (which cannot be proved ever to have been) is little to our business. Nor yet whether he will prove that it is not Prelacy but Secular Coactive power and grandeur that is denied to the Apostles, and that it was those that grudged at the Precedency desired for James and John, which Christ intended to reprehend, because it was not an injurious Secular power, but a labour that was to be in the Prelates of the Church. It sufficeth me that so much is here confessed. And it cannot be denied: For that Precedency and Power which Christ alloweth in the Rulers of the Nations, is it which he denieth to his Disciples: But it is not Tyranny, proud Domination and Oppression, but just Secular Government, which he alloweth in the Rulers of the Nations: Ergo, it is this and not the former which he denieth to his Disciples.
Cap. 2. Whether the 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, the Regeneration, be the New Church State, and the Apostles Episcopal Thrones be there meant, as setled in several Provinces (which cannot be proved ever to have been) is little to our business. Nor yet whether he will prove that it is not Prelacy but Secular Coactive power and g•andure that is denyed to the Apostles, and that it was those that grudged at the Precedency desired for James and John, which Christ intended to reprehend, because it was not an injurious Secular power, but a labour that was to be in the Prelates of the Church. It sufficeth me that so much is here confessed. And it cannot be denied: For that Precedency and Power which Christ alloweth in the Rulers of the Nations, is it which he denyeth to his Disciples: But it is not Tyranny, proud Domination and Oppression, but just Secular Government, which he alloweth in the Rulers of the Nations: Ergo, it is this and not the former which he denyeth to his Disciples.
And let all the Prelates here remember, that the Question, Whether they be Above their Brethren by Dr. H's Confession, is, Whether they may take more care and pains for Mens Salvation? When one of us poor Ministers were not able night and day to Catechise, instruct and oversee a Congregation of two or three thousand Souls, without much help or many sad unavoidable Omissions, the Question shall be, whether the Bishop may not undertake to Teach and oversee many hundreds or a thousand Parishes, and Catechise, Pray with, and Exhort a thousand times more than any Parish Minister doth or is able to do; And to do all this without ever coming into those Parishes, or ever seeing the Faces, or hearing the names of one of a multitude of the People; or ever speaking one word to them, but summoning them by Apparitors to a Lay-Chancellors