Ratio disciplinae fratrum Nov-Anglorum. A faithful account of the discipline professed and practised; in…

Gentlemen who consult Antiquity, wonder how any Man alive can read the Letters of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians, and remain Unconvinced, That there were no such Bishop• in those Days as Lord it over the Heritage of GOD in ours. They are sensible that Polycarp, in his most famous Letters to the Philippians, mentions no other than Presbyters & Deacons, as Officers in the Churches, when it was his Concern, if there had been any other, not to have loft them Unmentioned; And, That if the Epistles of Ignatius, about which there have been so many Learned Impertinences, among the Modern Critics upon them, had been genuine, yet they countenance no other than a Congregational Episcopacy; which would soon End our Controversies. For Three Centuries they can see no Footsteps of any more than a Moderator in Church-Assemblies, whose Powers were very far short of those, which the Prelates of later Ages have thence taken Occasion, according to the ⟨p. 200⟩usual Strain of Ecclesiastical Encroachments, to pretend unto. We know when the Episcopal Superiority was confessed, A Novel Constitution. It shocks the Usurpations of the Modern Prelacy, with Millions of considerate Christians, to find Jerome confessing, That, apud veteres iidem Episcopi et Presbyteri fuerunt; Bishops & Presbyters were of old the very same; and that the Superiority of Bishops to Presbyters, was, Consuetudine magis quam Dominicae Dispositionis Veritate; rather by Custom than by any Appointment from the Lord. And they find an Authority as good as Ambrose, if it were not his, affirming that in the Primitive Times, The Ordination of a Bishop and of a Presbyter was one and the same; and relating how Men of Aspiring Spirits brought on a Gradual Alteration. When our Whitaker has Occasion to produce the Confession of Jerome, That the Difference between Bishops & Presbyters, was brought in by Men long after the Apostles as a Remedy against Schism, he can't forbear making this Remonstrance upon it, That the Remedy has been worse than the Malady. And yet this Doctor was a Champion of a Church, which now to a strange Degree values it self upon its Diocesan Episcopacy. Dr.

Gentlemen who consult Antiquity, wonder how any Man alive can read the Letters of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians, and remain Unconvinced, That there were no such Bishop• in those Days as Lord it over the Heritage of GOD in ours. They are sensible that Polycarp, in his most famous Letters to the Philippians, mentions no other than Presbyters & Deacons, as Officers in the Churches, when it was his Concern, if there had been any other, not to have loft them Unmentioned; And, That if the Epistles of Ignatius, about which there have been so many Learned Impertinencies, among the Modern Criticks upon them, had been genuine, yet they countenance no other than a Congregational Episcopacy; which would soon End our Controversies. For Three Centuries they can see no Footsteps of any more than a Moderator in Church-Assemblies, whose Powers were very sar short of those, which the Prelates of later Ages have thence taken Occasion, according to the