141.
They (the Erastians) misunderstood and injured their brethren, supposing and affirming them to claim as from God a coercive power over the bodies or purses of men, and so setting up 'imperium in imperio'; whereas all temperate Christians (at least except Papists) confess that the Church hath no power of force, but only to manage God's word unto men's consciences.
But are not the receivers as bad as the thief?
Is it not a poor evasion to say:--"It is true I send you to a dungeon there to rot, because you do not think as I do concerning some point of faith;--but this only as a civil officer.

As a divine I only tenderly entreat and persuade you!" Can there be fouler hypocrisy in the Spanish Inquisition than this?
Ib.p.

142.
That hereby they (the Diocesan party) altered the ancient species of Presbyters, to whose office the spiritual government of their proper folks as truly belonged, as the power of preaching and worshiping God did.
I could never rightly understand this objection of Richard Baxter's.
What power not possessed by the Rector of a parish, would he have wished a parochial Bishop to have exerted?
What could have been given by the Legislature to the latter which might not be given to the former?
In short Baxter's plan seems to do away Archbishops--[Greek: koinoi episkopoi]--but for the rest to name our present Rectors and Vicars Bishops.

I cannot see what is gained by his plan.

The true difficulty is that Church discipline is attached to an Establishment by this world's law, not to the form itself established: and his objections from paragraph 5 to paragraph 10 relate to particular abuses, not to Episcopacy itself.
Ib.p.