Following on from last week's post on Bramhall and the non-episcopal continental Churches, an important passage in which Bramhall describes the absence of the episcopacy in Calvin's Geneva as "out of necessity": No more did Calvin himself out of judgment, but out of necessity, to comply with the present estate of Geneva, after the expulsion of their Bishop: as might be made appear, it were needful, by his public profession of their readiness to receive such Bishops as the primitive Bishops were, or otherwise that they were to be reputed " nullo non anathemate dignid "; by his subscription to the Augustan Confession, which is for Episcopacy ... by his confession to the King of Polonia - "The ancient Church instituted Patriarchates, and assigned primacy to single provinces, that Bishops might be better knit together in the bond of Unity"; by his description of the charge of a Bishop that should join himself to the reformed Church, "to do his end...
Old High - Burkean - clerk in holy orders