A27050:505
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. 19. He further strengtheneth us by maintaining that the word Presbyter, in the places of the New Testament cited by him, doth mean only ⟨p. 99⟩a Bishop, that is a Pastor of one only Congregation, that had no Presbyter under him, but Deacons: and that no mention is made by the Apostles of other Presbyters, § 6. And he gratifieth us with Epiphanius his Reasons, § 4. [because as yet there was not a multitude of Believers:] And that the Elders that Paul speaketh to Timothy of ordaining and rebuking, and those that were worthy of double honour, were only Bishops that had no subject Presbyters. Whether they were set over the Churches as Moses was over Israel, with a design that they should make subordinate Officers under them, I shall enquire in due place.
Cap. 19. He surther strengtheneth us by maintaining that the word Presbyter, in the places of the New Testament cited by him, doth mean only ⟨p. 99⟩a Bishop, that is a Pastor of one only Congregation, that had no Presbyter under him, but Deacons: and that no mention is made by the Apostles of other Presbyters, § 6. And he gratifieth us with Epiphanius his Reasons, § 4. [because as yet there was not a multitude of Believers:] And that the Elders that Paul speaketh to Timothy of ordaining and rebuking, and those that were worthy of double honour, were only Bishops that had no subject Presbyters. Whether they were set over the Churches as Moses was over Israel, with a design that they should make subordinate Officers under them, I shall enquire in due place.
Cap. 20. He goeth over most of the other Texts in the New Testament that mention Elders, showing that they mean such Bishops; and that even at Jerusalem, the Elders Acts 15. were not our new half Priests, but the Bishops of all the Churches of Judea; and so of others here again repeated by him. But it sticketh with me, that these Bishops having no subject Presbyters, are found so oft in the Metropolitan City, and so oft in travel, and so oft many hundred Miles from home, that I doubt it was but a few Churches in the world that kept the Lords day, and assembled for public Worship, or had any Sacraments frequently, but lived as the Atheists and impious contemners of Church-Communion now do; or else that with the Fanatics we must hold that Lay-men or Deacons did play the Priests in all Church Offices.