A27050:884
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.
ARGUMENT I.
WE cannot subscribe or swear to that form of Church Government as good or lawful, which in its nature excludeth or destroyeth the very specific nature of the particular Churches which were instituted by the Holy Ghost, and settled in the primitive times, and is it self a humane from set up in their stead.
WE cannot subscribe or swear to that form of Church Government as good or lawful, which in its nature excludeth or destroyeth the very specifical nature of the particular Churches which were instituted by the Holy Ghost, and setled in the primitive times, and is it self a humane from set up in their stead.
But such we take the present Diocesan form to be: Ergo,
But such we take the present Diocesane form to be: Ergo,
The Major will be denied by very few that we have now to do with. And those few that will deny it, must do it on this supposition, 1. That the Holy Ghost did institute that particular Church Form which is destroyed but pro tempore. And Secondly, That he allowed men since to set up one or more of their own in its stead. But the disproof of this supposition will fall in more fitly, when I have showed what Church Form was first settled.