A27050:609
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
Part 1 › Chapter 7: The Definition and reasons of a Diocesan Church considered, and overthrown.
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 the City and territories have Christians enow for many Churches, then either they are formed into many or not. If they are, they should (by their own confession) have many Bishops: If not, either Church Societies are Gods ordinance or not. If not, the City should have none: If they are, where hath God exempted the Country from the privilege or duty any more than the City?
But if the City and territories have Christians enow for many Churches, then either they are formed into many or not. If they are, they should (by their own confession) have many Bishops: If not, either Church Societies are Gods ordinance or not. If not, the City should have none: If they are, where hath God exempted the Country from the priviledge or duty any more than the City?
But if they should say that a Diocesan Church is one Church in a City and its territories consisting of Christians enow to make many, of whom the most part take up with oratories for Churches, this would suite our Notion of a Diocesan Church, but not theirs. For they say that it is not necessary that a Diocesan Church have more than one Congregation.
Therefore it must needs follow that their Diocesan Church must differ from our Parish or Congregational Churches only in potentiâ and not in actu, or else earth or Infidels must be the differencing matter. Unless they will say that the Order of Prelacy in it maketh the difference, which is the office of a Pastor who is actually Governor but of one congregation, but is in potentia to be the Governor of more when he can convert them, and then is the Governor of them all in that territory when they are converted. But if one congregation or many make not the difference, a mere possibility in the Infidels of becoming Christians cannot make the difference, because the Subjects of that possibility are no members of the Church at all. Therefore the difference must be only in the office of the Bishop. And if so, then an Independent Church that hath a Bishop is a Diocesan Church; And so an Independent and a Diocesan Church may be all one. And then if a Bishop were but settled in a Parish Church in the City or Country, it would make it a Diocesan Church. And then when we have proved that the Country should have Churches, and not mere Oratories, and that every Church should have a Bishop, and so that a Bishop is not to be appropriated to a City and its territories, we have done all. And that society which should have all Gods Church ordinances, should have a Pastor necessary for the exercising of them all. But every true Parish Church, should have