A27050:91
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.
This Jurisdiction of Bishops is exercised either Universally by a Vicar General, usually a Lay-man; or qarticularly by a Commissary. [e] And when he please the Bishop may do it himself.
- eCos. Tab. 2.
The other part of their Jurisdiction is called Contentious; And here the Bishop may himself judge in some Cases fbut in the ordinary course of Jurisdiction, a Civil Lawyer called his Chancellor is the Judge: This Chancellor is and must be a Lay-man, which even Bishop Goodman of Gloucester, [Myst. Rel. Epist. I have it and can produce it at this time, under the Kings own Hand and Seal, wherein he forbids that any Churchman or Priest in Holy Orders be a Chancellor: and this was the occasion of all the corruption of the Spiritual Courts: For Chancellors live only on the Fees of the Court: and for them to dismiss a Cause, it was to lose so much blood. See further in him.] a Papist Bishop of a Protestant Diocese, complaineth in Print, that he could not get Reformed. This Chancellor keepeth an Ordinary Court, in the form of a Civil Court, where are Advocates for Council, and Proctors for pleading: gCertain men called Apparitors (whose name is commonly a scorn among the people,) do from abroad the Country bring them in Accusations, and Summon the persons accused; besides those that by Plaintiffs are accused. Here are judged Causes about Church Materials, and Causes Criminal; which he that readeth the whole Book of Canons and the Visitation Articles may see, they being too many for me to recite. hBesides a multitude of Cases about Marriages (to be contracted, dissolved, separation) and Testaments, and the Goods of Intestate persons.i