A27050:566
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. 120. It is observable which he saith [Indeed, if it were not (the Bishops work to visit the sick) how could it be •y the Bishop, when other parts of his Office became his full Employment, committed to the Presbyter. For, 1. he could not commit that to others, if he first had it not in himself: And, 2. This was the only Reason of ordaining inferior Officers in the Church, that part of the Bishops ta•k might be performed by them.
Pag. 120. It is observable which he saith [Indeed, if it were not (the Bishops work to visit the sick) how could it be •y the Bishop, when other parts of his Office became his full Employment, commited to the Presbyter. For, 1. he could not commit that to others, if he first had it not in himself: And, 2. This was the only Reason of ordaining inferior Officers in the Church, that part of the Bishops ta•k might be performed by them.
Ans. Either he believed that the Office of a Subject Presbyter (or Order as they ⟨p. 111⟩call it) was instituted by God, and settled in the Church as necessary by his Spirit, and Law, or not: If he do, then Qu. 1. Whether the work of these Presbyters, after the institution, be not the work of their own Office, and not (in the individual acts) the Bishops? As Eve was a Rib of Adam materially, but when she was a woman she was no part of Adam, nor her acts like his acts; and so of all woman-kind thereafter. Qu. 2. Whether the Bishop any other way commit the work or Office to him, than by calling him to an Office which God himself had made or instituted, and Ministerially investing him in it as a Servant (that hath no land of his own) may be sent by his Master to invest another in some Land which he hath given him, by a Legal Solemn delivery of possession; or as a Steward may send such Reapers into his Masters field as his Master did before exactly describe to him? Christ being the only maker of the Office, and punctual describer of it, and the Bishop, people, and Magistrates altogether, doing no more but choose the Person described as fit, and deliver him possession of the place.