A27050:579
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.
3. The reasons are vain and null, which are pretended for such a modelling of Churches to the form of the civil Government, and thus confining them to Cities. For, 1. There is no need that one Bishop be the Governor of another at all; 2. And therefore no need that the Bishop of a Metropolis govern the Bishop of a lesser City, or he, the Bishop of a Village. 1. God hath not given one Bishop power over another, as mere Bishops. As Cyprian saith, in his Carth. Council, none of us are Bishops of Bishops, but Colleagues. Dr. Hammond himself saith, that the Bishops are the Apostles Successors, and the Apostles were equal in power and Independent, Annot. in 1 Tim. 3. c. p 732. Jesus Christ dispensing them (all the particular Churches of the whole world by himself and administering them severally, not by any one Oeconomus, but by the several Bishops as inferior heads of unity to the several bodies so constituted by the several Apostles in their plantations, each of them having [Greek or Hebrew] a several distinct commission from Christ immediately, and subordinate to none but the supreme donor or plenipotentiary.] Indeed if it be not Bishops, but Archbishops or Bishops of Bishops which are the Apostles Successors, in order over the Bishops as they are supposed to be over the ⟨p. 115⟩Priests, then such an order of Arch-Bishops is of divine right; But not as Metropolitans, or for the Cities sake, but as general Officers to take care of many Churches, succeeding the Apostles.
3. The reasons are vain and null, which are pretended for such a modelling of Churches to the form of the civil Government, and thus confining them to Cities. For, 1. There is no need that one Bishop be the Governour of another at all; 2. And therefore no need that the Bishop of a Metropolis govern the Bishop of a lesser City, or he, the Bishop of a Village. 1. God hath not given one Bishop power over another, as meer Bishops. As Cyprian saith, in his Carth. Council, none of us are Bishops of Bishops, but Colleagues. Dr. Hammond himself saith, that the Bishops are the Apostles Successors, and the Apostles were equal in power and Independent, Annot. in 1 Tim. 3. c. p 732. Jesus Christ dispensing them (all the particular Churches of the whole world by himself and administring them severally, not by any one Oeconomus, but by the several Bishops as inferiour heads of unity to the severalbodies so constituted by the several Apostles in their plantations, each of them having a several distinct commission from Christ immediately, and subordinate to none but the supreme donor or plenipotentiary.] Indeed if it be not Bishops, but Archbishops or Bishops of Bishops which are the Apostles Successors, in order over the Bishops as they are supposed to be over the