A27050:82
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. II. The English Diocesan Prelacy, and Church-Government, truly described; that it may be known what it is which we disown.
IT being not Episcopacy in General, but (the Popish and) the English Species of Prelacy, which our Judgments cannot approve, and which we cannot swear to as approvers, it is necessary that we tell strangers, what this Prelacy is, that the subject of our Controversy be not unknown, or misunderstood. But the subject is so large, that the very naming of the parts of our Ecclesiastical Government, in Tables by Dr. Ri. Cousins, maketh up a Volume in 16 Tables, and many hundred branches. Which being written in Latin I must refer the Foreign Reader to it; Not at all for the understanding of our Practice, but only of our Rule, or Laws with our Church-Constitution: seeing it would take up a considerable Volume to open but one half of his Scheme. All that I shall now do is to give you this brief Intimation.
IT being not Episcopacy in General, but (the Popish and) the English Species of Prelacy, which our Judgments cannot approve, and which we cannot swear to as approvers, it is necessary that we tell strangers, what this Prelacy is, that the subject of our Controversie be not unknown, or misunderstood. But the subject is so large, that the very naming of the parts of our Ecclesiastical Government, in Tables by Dr. Ri. Cosins, maketh up a Volume in 16 Tables, and many hundred branches. Which being written in Latin I must refer the Foreign Reader to it; Not at all for the understanding of our Practice, but only of our Rule, or Laws with our Church-Constitution: seeing it would take up a considerable Volume to open but one half of his Scheme. All that I shall now do is to give you this brief Intimation.