A27050:546
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. 11. Is of little moment to us, both parties have little that is cogent, but velitations about dubious words.
Cap. 12. Is but about the sense of the word applied to Ireneu• ▪ which Dr. H. taketh here and by many after to mean a Bishop, and wonders that Blondel pleadeth for a parity of order from a common Name. But it is not so much without reason as he maketh it: For if Bishops and Presbyters were in the first times called by one Name; and the highest Person in the Church then was ordinarily known by the name Presbyter, and the appropriating of [Bishop] to one sort▪ and Presbyter to another, came afterwards in by such insensible degrees, that no man can tell when it was, it sounds very probable, that it was the true Episcopal Power, or the same Office and Order, that was first commonly possessed by them to whom the name was Common.
Cap. 12. Is but about the sense of the word applyed to Ireneu• ▪ which Dr. H. taketh here and by many after to mean a Bishop, and wonders that Blondel pleadeth for a parity of order from a common Name. But it is not so much without reason as he maketh it: For if Bishops and Presbyters were in the first times called by one Name; and the highest Person in the Church then was ordinarily known by the name Presbyter, and the appropriating of [Bishop] to one sort▪ and Presbyter to another, came afterwards in by such insensible degrees, that no man can tell when it was, it sounds very probable, that it was the true Episcopal Power, or the same Office and Order, that was first commonly possessed by them to whom the name was Common.