A27050:552
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.
Pag. 26. Again you have his full and plain Assertion, [That there were not in the space within compass of which all the Books of the new Testament were written, any Presbyters, in our modern Notion of them, created in the Church, though soon after certainly in Ignatius time, (which was above 50 years after the Rev.) they were].
Pag. 60. He supposeth that whoever should settle Churches under a Heathen King among Heathens, must accordingly make the Churches gathered subordinate to one another, as the Cities in which they are gathered were (though Heathen) subordinate to one another, of which more in due place.
Pag. 60. He supposeth that whoever should settle Churches under a Heathen King among Heathens, must accordinly make the Churches gathered subordinate to one another, as the Cities in which they are gathered were (though Heathen) subordinate to one another, of which more in due place.
Pag. 76, 77. He saith that [As Congregations, and Parishes are Synonymous in their Style, so I yield that Believers in great Cities were not at first divided into Parishes, while the number of Christians in a City was so small that they might well assemble in the same place, and so needed no Partitions, or Divisions. But what disadvantage is this to us, who affirm that one Bishop, not a College of Presbyters, presided in that one Congregation, and that the Believers in the Regions and Villages about did belong to the care of that single Bishop, or City Church] A Bishop and his Deacon were sufficient at the first (to sow) their Plantations—[For what is a Diocese but a Church in a City with the Suburbs and Territories, or Region belonging to it? And this certainly might be and remain under the Government of a single Bishop. Of any Church so bounded there may be a Bishop, and that whole Church shall be his Diocese, and so he a Diocesan Bishop, though as yet this Church be not subdivided into more several Assemblies.] So that you see now what a Diocese is. And that you may know that we contend not about Names, while they call the Bishop of one