A27050:965
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.
So that you see in Petavius opinion, even when Epiphanius wrote, the ordinary Cities of the World had but one Assembly in each City and Suburbs; And only some extraordinary Cities (of which only Alexandria could be named by Epiphanius, and Rome also by Petavius, and no more by any other Author) had divers settled Titles under their several Presbyters: And even those Titles in those two Cities were but Chapels, like our Parish Chapels, received consecrated Bread from the Bishops Church, lest they should think that they were a distinct body of themselves. Yea, and that the Villages that had Assemblies had their proper Bishops. And so I dismiss Petavius with thanks, for his free Concession.
So that you see in Petavius opinion, even when Epiphanius wrote, the ordinary Cities of the World had but one Assembly in each City and Suburbs; And only some extraordinary Cities (of which only Alexandria could be named by Epiphanius, and Rome also by Petavius, and no more by any other Author) had divers setled Titles under their several Presbyters: And even those Titles in those two Cities were but Chappels, like our Parish Chappels, received consecrated Bread from the Bishops Church, lest they should think that they were a distinct body of themselves. Yea, and that the Villages that had Assemblies had their proper Bishops. And so I dismiss Petavius with thanks, for his free Concession.
2. My next Witness is Bishop Downame, the strongest that hath written against1 Parish Bishops for Diocesans; who, lib. 1. cap. 1. (before recited) saith, [Indeed at the very first Conversion of Cities, the whole number of the people converted, being somewhere not much greater than the number of Presbyters placed among them, were able to make but a small Congregation.] And cap. 6. pag. 104. [At the first, and namely the time of the Apostle Paul, the most of the Churches, so soon after their Conversion, did not each of them, exceed the proportion of a populous Congregation.] Though this reach not so low as Petavius Concession, it is as much as I need to the present business.