A27050:618
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 yet converting them as such giveth him not a right to govern them as their Pastor, nor necessitateth them to choose him: As I prove.
1. Because a Lay man (as Frumentius and Edesius and Origen, &c.) may convert men, who are not Pastors to them or any.
2. Because Conversion and Baptism as such is but mens admission into the Universal Church (as in the Eunuchs case, Act. 8. is manifest) and not into any particular Church: It uniteth them to Christ, but not to any particular Pastor: For they Baptize not into their own name.
3. Because when two or three go together, as Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Luke, &c. it is to be supposed that one converteth not all, but one some and another some; and therefore if converting gave right there must be many Bishops and Churches in a place.