A27050:78
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.
9. It is part of our Honouring the King and Parliament and other Magistrates, not to despise or slight their censures: And the judgment which they have publicly passed on us, in an Act of Confinement, which imposeth the Oath for Prelacy, is so hard and grievous, that if we are guilty, it is fit we should be made the common reproach of men; And if we are not, (as Non-conformists) it is our duty to rectify the judgment of our superiors where they are misinformed. And as Augustine saith, that no good Christian should be patient under an imputation of Heresy; so I may say that no good Subject should be senslesly patient under an imputation of disloyalty and sedition: That better beseemeth the anarchical and truly disloyal and seditious, who take it for no crime.
9. It is part of our Honouring the King and Parliament and other Magistrates, not to despise or slight their censures: And the judgment which they have publickly passed on us, in an Act of Confinement, which imposeth the Oath for Prelacy, is so hard and grievous, that if we are guilty, it is fit we should be made the common reproach of men; And if we are not, (as Non-conformists) it is our duty to rectifie the judgment of our superiours where they are misinformed. And as Augustine saith, that no good Christian should be patient under an imputation of Heresie; so I may say that no good Subject should be senslesly patient under an imputation of disloyalty and sedition: That better beseemeth the anarchical and truly disloyal and seditious, who take it for no crime.
10. And we know how pleasantly the Papists insult to hear us stigmatized for Villains and seditious Persons by our brethren, and what use they will make of it at present and in future History to the Service of their malice, and injury to the truth: which we ought not silently still to suffer; while we see how hereby they do already multiply.
11. And how unlikely soever it be, it is not impossible, that our Superiors, that at once deposed and silenced about 1800. Ministers of Christ, when they see what Reasons we have for our Non-conformity, may be moved to restore those that yet survive: And then how many thousand souls would have the joy and benefit?