A27050:846
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.
2. And this appeareth by the forecited Canons of Counsels, which forbade Pastors, ever almost three hundred years after Christ, to read the Gentiles books. By which the former custom of the Church may easily be perceived. And also by abundance of reproaches which are cast upon some Heretics in the Ancients writings, for being too much skilled in Logic and other of the Gentiles Learning.
2. And this appeareth by the forecited Canons of Counsels, which forbad Pastors, ever almost three hundred years after Christ, to read the Gentiles books. By which the former custome of the Church may easily be perceived. And also by abundance of reproaches which are cast upon some Hereticks in the Ancients writings, for being too much skilled in Logick and other of the Gentiles Learning.
3. And it appeareth by the parity of writers of the second and third Centuries.
4. And also by the paucity of famous Divines that are mentioned in the Histories of those times.
5. And above all by the plainness and simplicity of those that are described and of their writings. I speak not in any contempt of them for this (perhaps we value common learning now too highly) But only to tell you the true History of those times. No doubt but many poor men among us, (divers Weavers and some Ploughmen, of the Church which I was removed from; for instance) are able to pray, and teach as well as most of those who are by Eusebius extolled as the famous Bishops of the second and third age; and to write as Methodical, pious, weighty tractates, as any that were then written by men that neither conversed with the Apostles, nor had been bred up in Philosophy: That I say rot as Clemens Romanus himself, or Ignatius, or Irenaeus, yea or Cyprian's, Epistles are. Yea, or as many of the ages following; even as holy Macarius, Epherm, Cyrus, Synisius, (a Philosopher) Isidore. Pelusiota, and many more have written since. If this be not believed, how many Lay-men could I name who have written more accurately and judiciously, and as far as the writings show, as piously as any of these? And that not only Learned Lay-men, but men that had neither many Languages nor Philosophy. And if the books then written were very few, and of those very few that were written by any but Bishops or Philosophers,