A27050:586
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.
7. According to their model Churches shall be mutable and dissolvable at the will of the Magistrate, yea of every Heathen Magistrate: For ⟨p. 117⟩if he will but change the privileges and title of a Town and make it no City, it must have no Church or Bishop: And if he will remove the privileges and title, the Church and Bishop must remove: And if he will endow a big Village or Town with City privileges and name, a Church and Bishop must be then made anew. But who can believe that Christ thus modelled his Churches in his institution?
7. According to their model Churches shall be mutable and dissolvible at the will of the Magistrate, yea of every Heathen Magistrate: For ⟨p. 117⟩if he will but change the priviledges and title of a Town and make it no City, it must have no Church or Bishop: And if he will remove the privileges and title, the Church and Bishop must remove: And if he will endow a big Village or Town with City privileges and name, a Church and Bishop must be then made anew. But who can believe that Christ thus modled his Churches in his institution?
8. Yea after their model, an infidel or Christian King a•iud agen•, that never thinketh on it or intendeth it, shall change the Churches, and destroy them. If by war a City be turned into no City, or if the King for other reasons un-city it, or if change of Government put it into another Princes power, that shall for his convenience un city it, the Church in City and Country is at an end, though there remain people enow to constitute a Church.