A27050:661
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.
CHAP. XI. That a Bishop or Pastor of a particular Church of the first rank aforedescribed, must Govern it statedly, as present by himself, and not as in absence by another.
Nothing hath more deceived men (next to Infidelity and Carnality)1 •n this controversy, than want of experience: Judging by a noise of words of such matters as they never faithfully tried. Had men well tried a few years what it is to do the Office of a Pastor, they would easily know to whom it belongeth. But when either University students, or Nominal Pastors do stand by and look on, or read and hear only of the name, of Church-Power and Government, and never did more themselves, than to preach and say the service of the Church, or now and then visit a sick man, or dine or talk on the by with a neighbour, or at most hear Children say their Catechism, it is no wonder if they talk at random, and think that a man may be the only Bishop of many hundred Churches, and Govern them per alios, or at twenty, or forty, or an hundred miles distance, by mere visiting or meeting the Clergy, and dining with them once in three Years.
NOthing hath more deceived men (next to Infidelity and Carnality)1 •n this controversie, than want of experience: Judging by a noise of words of such matters as they never faithfuly tryed. Had men well tryed a few years what it is to do the Office of a Pastor, they would easily know to whom it belongeth. But when either University students, or Nominal Pastors do stand by and look on, or read and hear only of the name, of Church-Power and Government, and never did more themselves, than to preach and say the service of the Church, or now and then visit a sick man, or dine or talk on the by with a neighbour, or at most hear Chilren say their Catechism, it is no wonder if they talk at randome, and think that a man may be the only Bishop of many hundred Churches, and Govern them per alios, or at twenty, or fourty, or an hundred miles distance, by meer visiting or meeting the Clergy, and dining with them once in three Years.