A27050:945
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.
My next proof of the limitation of Churches in Scripture times is, that Deacons and Bishops were distinct Officers appointed to the same Churches. The Church which the Deacon was related to, was the very same, and of the same extent, with the Church which the Bishop was related to; as is plain in all Texts where they are described; Act. 6. 1 Tim. 3. Tit. 7. &c. But it is most clear that no Deacon then had the charge of many hundred Churches, or more than one such as I have described: Therefore neither had the Bishop of that Church.
They that have now extended the Office of the Deacons further, and have alienated them from their first works, of attending at the Sacred Tables, and taking care of the Poor, cannot deny but that this was at least a great part of their work in the Scripture times and some Ages after (at least when Jerome ad Evagr. described the Offices of the Presbyters and Deacons.) And was any man then made a Deacon to a Diocese? or to many hundred Churches? or to more than one? Did he attend the Tables of many Churches each Lords day at the same time? If you say that there were many Deacons, and some were in one Church and some in another, it is true: that is, They were in several Assemblies, which were every one a true Church, and they were oft many in one Assembly: But there was no one that was related to Many stated Church Assemblies; nor to a Church of a lesser size or magnitude than the Bishop was.
They that have now extended the Office of the Deacons further, and have alienated them from their first works, of attending at the Sacred Tables, and taking care of the Poor, cannot deny but that this was at least a great part of their work in the Scripture times and some Ages after (at least when Jerome ad Evagr. described the Offices of the Presbyters and Deacons.) And was any man then made a Deacon to a Diocess? or to many hundred Churches? or to more than one? Did he attend the Tables of many Churches each Lords day at the same time? If you say that there were many Deacons, and some were in one Church and some in another, it is true: that is, They were in several Assemblies, which were every one a true Church, and they were oft many in one Assembly: But there was no one that was related to Many stated Church Assemblies; nor to a Church of a lesser size or magnitude than the Bishop was.