A27050:83
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.
That in England there are 26 or 27 Bishoprics: of which two are Archbishops: In all these set together there was when Speed numbered them, nine thousand seven hundred twenty five Parish Churches, but now many more. In the Diocese that I live in (Lincoln) there is above a 1000 or 1100. In very many of these Parishes, besides the Parish-Churches, there are Chapels, that have Curates, in some Parishes one Chapel, in some two, in some three, if not more. In these Parishes the number of Inhabitants is various, as they are greater or lesser: The greatest about London, such as Stepney, Giles-Cripplegate, Sepulchres, Martins, &c. have some about 50000 persons, (some say much more) some about 30000, some about 20000, &c. But ordinarily in Cities and Market-Towns through the Country, the number is about 2000, or 3000, or 4000, or 5000 at the most, except Plymouth, and some few great Parishes that have far more. And in Villages, in some 2000, in some 1000, in some small ones 500, or 300, or in some very small ones fewer. There are in England 641 Market-Towns (saith Speed) which are of the greater sort of Parishes, and such as in old times were called Cities, though now a few have got that title; at least a great number of them are equal, and some much greater and richer than some that now are named Cities. The Diocese that I live in is about six-score Miles in length. By all this you may conjecture how many hundred thousand souls are in some Dioceses, and at what a distance from each other: and what personal Communion