A27050:460
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. 4. He proveth by strong affirmation, that the Apostles were by Christ's last Commission, Mat. 28. 19, 20. to be the Bishops of their several assigned certain Provinces. But confidence goeth not for proof with us. He tells us of the name of Episcopacy, Acts 1. 29. We never questioned, whether the Apostles had the Oversight of the Church; but we hold, 1. That the World was the first Object of their Office, from whence they were to gather Churches. 2. That the Place, Course, or Circuit of their Travels and Ministry, was not of any Divine Institution, but left to their prudent choice, by the Common Rules of Nature (doing all things in Order, and to Edifying) and sometime directed in their motions by the present inspiration of the Holy-Ghost. 3. That more than one Apostle was oft in the same Cities and Countries, none claiming it as his peculiar Province, nor denying the right of others to be there. And where one was this Year, another was the next. 4. That when an Apostle planted a Church in any City, and settled Bishops over the People, they themselves were called by many of the Ancients, the first Bishops of those Cities; in which sense, one Man had many Bishoprics. 5. That the Apostles were Itinerant unfixed Bishops, and not fixed Bishops, such as they themselves confined to any one limited Church or Province. Nor can it be proved out of all Antiquity, that any one of all the Apostles, was confined to any one limited Province, much less what that Province was; but only that their Ability, Opportunity, Time and Prudence limited every Man, and directed him as the End required. 6. And that if the Apostles had fixed themselves in particular limited Provinces, they had disobeyed their Commission, which was, to go Preach the Gospel to all the World. And no Man did ever yet so dote, as to pretend that they divided the whole World into twelve Provinces, and there fixed themselves: And such twelve Provinces as they had been capable of overseeing, would have been but a little of the World: And it was but a little part, comparatively, that they Preached the Gospel to: Most Kingdoms of the World they never saw: And those which they came into, were so great and many, that they Preached but to a few of the People. Yet this was not their culpable Omission, because ⟨p. 87⟩they were limited by Natural Impotency, and so by Impossibilities of doing more:
Cap. 4. He proveth by strong affirmation, that the Apostles were by Christ's last Commission,