A27050:690
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.
Yet it is as true, that it is a thing to be done before the Congregation, that they may not only exercise a bare obedience to the Pastor in it, but also an abhorrence of the sin, which they cannot do that have no satisfactory notice of the case; And also that all suspicions of injustice and Church tyranny in their Pastors may be avoided: And that the offender may be convinced before all, that he may be ashamed: And seeing no man is to be excommunicated for any ordinary great sin, without impenitency in it; so that the question is not then so much whether the man have sinned, as whether he be Penitent, what man of any experience in these matters can believe that a Bishops, or a Chancellors Court among strangers, and also when he is in fear of being imprisoned and utterly undone if he be excommunicated, is so fit to try a mans repentance, as the face of the Congregation where he is known, and hath no such motives to constrain him to lie, and use hypocrisy. Nay in very truth such judicatures may as easily know beforehand, that all the impenitent persons that almost ever come before them, (who are not conscientious persons that take the sin for a duty) will say they repent, and play the dissemblers as that a Child will cry for forgiveness to escape a whipping.
Yet it is as true, that it is a thing to be done before the Congregation, that they may not only exercise a bare obedience to the Pastor in it, but also an abhorrence of the sin, which they cannot do that have no satisfactory notice of the case; And also that all suspitions of injustice and Church tyranny in their Pastors may be avoided: And that the offender may be convinced before all, that he may be ashamed: And seeing no man is to be excommunicated for any ordinary great sin, without impenitency in it; so that the question is not then so much whether the man have sinned, as whether he be Penitent, what man of any experience in these matters can believe that a Bishops, or a Chancellors Court among strangers, and also when he is in fear of being imprisoned and utterly undone if he be excommunicated, is so fit to try a mans repentance, as the face of the Congregation where he is known, and hath no such motives to constrain him to lie, and use hypocrisie. Nay in very truth such judicatures may as easily know beforehand, that all the impenitent persons that almost ever come before them, (who are not conscientious persons that take the sin for a duty) will say they repent, and play the dissemblers as that a Child will cry for forgiveness to escape a whipping.