A27050:659
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.
5. And whether he can do all or any of this, to a transient multitude, that as the waters of a river are passing away, when he still seeth strange faces only, and those are his Auditors, and Communicants, whom he never saw before, or knoweth: how can he know whether they are Baptized Christians, or unbaptized, Jews or other Infidels?
5. And whether he can do all or any of this, to a transient multitude, that as the waters of a river are passing away, when he still seeth strange faces only, and those are his Auditors, and Commuicants, whom he never saw before, or knoweth: how can he know whether they are Baptized Christians, or unbaptized, Jews or other Infidels?
6. Therefore is not an ordinary Cohabitation, or vicinity, of necessity to a fixed Church and Pastor, that he may know them, and they may know each other? These things I suppose are past dispute.
7. And then I ask whether such a society as this be not a true Church? and such as is described in scripture? and such as should ordinarily be continued in the world? whether it be part of a more compounded general Church, and under the general oversight of Apostolical Bishops, is none of my question now; but whether this be not an ordinary political Church, of the first order?