A27050:568
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.
But if he thought that the Bishop himself doth make the Presbyters Office, by parting his own, and so giving him as much as he thinketh fit, I shall shame this Opinion in due place.
Pag. 132. (and in his Dissert.) he would make us believe that (Polycarp's Epistle, and so) Clement's [to the Church [Greek or Hebrew]] were to be interpreted extensively as relating to [Greek or Hebrew], to the Church in the Parish, that is the Diocese, of Corinth, or Province of Achaia: And so he distorteth Phil. 1. •. and other places; but in all his Citations giveth us not a word of proof, that [Greek or Hebrew] signifieth to dwell in the Circuit or extent of a Diocese, and not simply to so••uru or dwell. As if [Greek or Hebrew] were derived from [Greek or Hebrew], and as if the first notion of [Greek or Hebrew] were a Diocese, or a City with its Territories: As Pat Young saith on Clement's Epist. p. 1. [cum idem sit [Greek or Hebrew] quod [Greek or Hebrew] •t videre est statim in initio libri Ruth & alibi apud 70: which he further proveth, yea and by an old Inscription of an Altar brought from Delos, &c. see the place. And we took it to be agreed on that [Greek or Hebrew] in its strict sense is but habito tanquam peregrinus, advena sum; and in its usual larger sense, juxta habito, accolo, sum pr•ximus, vicinus accola. And [Greek or Hebrew] & [Greek or Hebrew] but incolatus & vicinia & habitatio propinqua; a place of cohabitation, or a neighbourhood: As we still take cohabitation to be a necessary qualification or dispositio materiae of a Church-member (of the same particular Church, contrary to the Diocesan state, where the Members never see each other, nor hear of their Names.) And though [Greek or Hebrew] in process of time (as Bishops enlarged their Diocese or Church) came to signify a whole Country, or Circuit as large as a Diocese did, yet no man can prove that it was so from the beginning of the Churches; or signified any determined space of ground, beyond the habitation of the members of one Worshipping Church or Congregation: Even as [Greek or Hebrew] is not to build in the same Diocese, but nea or in the same Neighbourhood; and [Greek or Hebrew] is not to set ones dwelling in the same Diocese, but vicinity: