_ST. PAUL AND THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY._
"And after the uproar was ceased, Paul having sent for the
disciples and exhorted them, took leave of them, and departed for
to go into Macedonia.... And upon the first day of the week, when
we were gathered together (at Troas) to break bread, Paul
discoursed with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and
prolonged his speech until midnight.... And from Miletus he sent
to Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the church. And when
they were come to him, he said unto them, Ye yourselves know,
from the first day I set foot in Asia, after what manner I was
with you all the time, serving the Lord with all lowliness of
mind, and with tears.... Take heed unto yourselves, and to all
the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to
feed the Church of God, which He purchased with His own
blood."--ACTS xx. 1, 7, 17-19, 28.
The period of St. Paul's career at which we have now arrived was full
of life, vigour, activity. He was in the very height of his powers,
was surrounded with responsibilities, was pressed with cares and
anxieties; and yet the character of the sacred narrative is very
peculiar. From the passover of the year 57, soon after which the
Apostle had to leave Ephesus, till the passover of the next year, we
learn but very little of St. Paul's work from the narrative of St.
Luke. The five verses with which the twentieth chapter begins tell us
all that St. Luke apparently knew about the Apostle's actions during
that time. He gives us the story of a mere outsider, who knew next to
nothing of the work St. Paul was doing. The Apostle left Ephesus and
went into Macedonia, whence he departed into Greece. Three months were
occupied in teaching at Corinth, and then, intending to sail from
Cenchreæ to Ephesus, he suddenly changed his mind upon the discovery
of a Jewish plot, altered his route, disappointed his foes, and paid a
second visit to Macedonia. In this narrative, which is all St. Luke
gives, we have the account, brief and concise, of one who was
acquainted merely with the bare outlines of the Apostle's work, and
knew nothing of his inner life and trials. St. Luke, in fact, was so
much taken up with his own duties at Philippi, where he had been
labouring for the previous five years, that he had no time to think of
what was going on elsewhere. At any rate his friend and pupil
Theophilus had simply asked him for a narrative so far as he knew it
of the progress of the gospel. He had no idea that he was writing
anything more than a story for the private use of Theophilus, and he
therefore put down what he knew and had experienced, without troubling
himself concerning other matters. I have read criticisms of the
Acts--proceeding principally, I must confess, from German
sources--which seem to proceed on the supposition that St. Luke was
consciously writing an ecclesiastical history of the whole early
Church which he knew and felt was destined to serve for ages.[218] But
this was evidently not the case. St. Luke was consciously writing a
story merely for a friend's study, and dreamt not of the wider fame
and use destined for his book. This accounts in a simple and natural
way, not only for what St. Luke inserts, but also for what he leaves
out, and he manifestly left out a great deal. We may take this passage
at which we have now arrived as an illustration of his methods of
writing sacred history. This period of ten months, from the time St.
Paul left Ephesus till he returned to Philippi at the following Easter
season, was filled with most important labours which have borne fruit
unto all ages of the Church, yet St. Luke dismisses them in a few
words. Just let us realise what happened in these eventful months. St.
Paul wrote First Corinthians in April A.D. 57. In May he passed to
Troas, where, as we learn from Second Corinthians, he laboured for a
short time with much success. He then passed into Macedonia, urged on
by his restless anxiety concerning the Corinthian Church. In Macedonia
he laboured during the following five or six months. How intense and
absorbing must have been his work during that time! It was then that
he preached the gospel with signs and wonders round about even unto
Illyricum, as he notes in Romans xvi. 19, an epistle written this very
year from Corinth. The last time that he had been in Macedonia he was
a hunted fugitive fleeing from place to place. Now he seems to have
lived in comparative peace, so far at least as the Jewish synagogues
were concerned. He penetrated, therefore, into the mountainous
districts west of Berœa, bearing the gospel tidings into cities and
villages which had as yet heard nothing of them. But preaching was not
his only work in Macedonia. He had written his first Epistle to
Corinth from Ephesus a few months before. In Macedonia he received
from Titus, his messenger, an account of the manner in which that
epistle had been received, and so from Macedonia he despatched his
second Corinthian Epistle, which must be carefully studied if we
desire to get an adequate idea of the labours and anxieties amid which
the Apostle was then immersed (see 2 Cor. ii. 13, and vii. 5 and 6).
And then he passed into Greece, where he spent three months at
Corinth, settling the affairs of that very celebrated but very
disorderly Christian community. The three months spent there must have
been a period of overwhelming business. Let us recount the subjects
which must have taken up every moment of St. Paul's time. First there
were the affairs of the Corinthian Church itself. He had to reprove,
comfort, direct, set in order. The whole moral, spiritual, social,
intellectual conceptions of Corinth had gone wrong. There was not a
question, from the most elementary topic of morals and the social
considerations connected with female dress and activities, to the most
solemn points of doctrine and worship, the Resurrection and the Holy
Communion, concerning which difficulties, disorders, and dissensions
had not been raised. All these had to be investigated and decided by
the Apostle. Then, again, the Jewish controversy, and the oppositions
to himself personally which the Judaising party had excited, demanded
his careful attention. This controversy was a troublesome one in
Corinth just then, but it was a still more troublesome one in Galatia,
and was fast raising its head in Rome. The affairs of both these great
and important churches, the one in the East, the other in the West,
were pressing upon St. Paul at this very time. While he was immersed
in all the local troubles of Corinth, he had to find time at Corinth
to write the Epistle to the Galatians and the Epistle to the Romans.
How hard it must have been for the Apostle to concentrate his
attention on the affairs of Corinth when his heart and brain were torn
with anxieties about the schisms, divisions, and false doctrines which
were flourishing among his Galatian converts, or threatening to invade
the Church at Rome, where as yet he had not been able to set forth his
own conception of gospel truth, and thus fortify the disciples against
the attacks of those subtle foes of Christ who were doing their best
to turn the Catholic Church into a mere narrow Jewish sect, devoid of
all spiritual power and life.
But this was not all, or nearly all. St. Paul was at the same time
engaged in organising a great collection throughout all the churches
where he had ministered on behalf of the poor Christians at Jerusalem,
and he was compelled to walk most warily and carefully in this matter.
Every step he took was watched by foes ready to interpret it
unfavourably; every appointment he made, every arrangement, no matter
how wise or prudent, was the subject of keenest scrutiny and
criticism. With all these various matters accumulating upon him it is
no wonder that St. Paul should have written of himself at this very
period in words which vividly describe his distractions: "Beside those
things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me daily,
the care of all the churches." And yet St. Paul gives us a glimpse of
the greatness of his soul as we read the epistles which were the
outcome of this period of intense but fruitful labour. He carried a
mighty load, but yet he carried it lightly. His present anxieties were
numerous, but they did not shut out all thoughts upon other topics.
The busiest man then was just the same as the busiest man still. He
was the man who had the most time and leisure to bestow thought upon
the future. The anxieties and worries of the present were numerous and
exacting, but St. Paul did not allow his mind to be so swallowed up in
them as to shut out all care about other questions equally important.
While he was engaged in the manifold cares which present controversies
brought, he was all the while meditating a mission to Rome, and
contemplating a journey still farther to Spain and Gaul,[219] and the
bounds of the Western ocean. And then, finally, there was the care of
St. Paul's own soul, the sustenance and development of his spirit by
prayer and meditation and worship and reading, which he never
neglected under any circumstances. All these things combined must have
rendered this period of close upon twelve months one of the Apostle's
busiest and intensest times, and yet St. Luke disposes of it in a few
brief verses of this twentieth chapter.
[218] I do not wish to decry the industry and learning of German
critics, to whom I owe much, as my various references show; but I
am always suspicious of their historical conclusions, simply
because they are pure students, and are therefore ignorant of life
and men. The more industrious and secluded a life a man may lead,
so much the more ignorant of the practical world a man becomes,
and so much the more unfitted to be a real historian, who must
know men as well as books. History is a picture of real life in
the past, and to paint it a man must know real life in the
present. As well might we set an academic scientist who regarded
all lines as straight and all bars as rigid to build the Forth
Bridge, as set a man who knows nothing of human nature and how it
acts under the stress of practical affairs to write the story of
human life two thousand years ago. We may take and use German
investigations, but we should apply English common sense and
experience to test German conclusions. This rule is, I fear, too
much forgotten in a great deal of the literature that is now being
pawned off upon the English world in the name of criticism. Surely
the fate of Baur's theories ought to be a warning to all young men
against swallowing as the latest results of scholarship everything
that comes clothed in the German language! The English nation has
a reputation for solid common sense. What fools the Germans would
be did they take everything English as full of common sense
because printed in our language!
[219] I say to Gaul, because I take it that he would have sailed
to Marseilles, which was then the great port of communication with
Asia Minor, as we have noted above, pp. 372-74, when treating of
the worship of Diana and its extension from the East to
Marseilles.
After St. Paul's stay at Corinth, he determined to proceed to
Jerusalem according to his predetermined plan, bringing with him the
proceeds of the collection which he had made. He wished to go by sea,
as he had done some three years before, sailing from Cenchreæ direct
to Syria. The Jews of Corinth, however, were as hostile as ever, and
so they hatched a plot to murder him before his embarkation. St. Paul,
however, having learned their designs, suddenly changed his route, and
took his journey by land through Macedonia, visiting once more his
former converts, and tarrying to keep the passover at Philippi with
the little company of Christian Jews who there resided. This
circumstance throws light upon verses 4 and 5 of this twentieth
chapter, which run thus: "There accompanied him as far as Asia Sopater
of Berœa, the son of Pyrrhus; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus
and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and of Asia, Tychicus
and Trophimus. But these had gone before, and were waiting for us at
Troas." St. Paul came to Philippi, found St. Luke there, celebrated
the passover, and then sailed away with St. Luke to join the company
who had gone before. And they had gone before for a very good reason.
They were all, except Timothy, Gentile Christians, persons therefore
who, unlike St. Paul, had nothing to do with the national rites and
customs of born Jews, and who might be much more profitably exercised
in working among the Gentile converts at Troas, free from any danger
of either giving or taking offence in connexion with the passover, a
lively instance of which danger Trophimus, one of their number,
subsequently afforded in Jerusalem, when his presence alone in St.
Paul's company caused the spread of a rumour which raised the riot so
fatal to St. Paul's liberty: "For they had seen with him in the city
Trophimus the Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into
the temple" (xxi. 29). This incident, together with St. Paul's conduct
at Jerusalem as told in the twenty-sixth verse of the twenty-first
chapter illustrates vividly St. Paul's view of the Jewish law and
Jewish rites and ceremonies. They were for Jews national ceremonies.
They had a meaning for them. They commemorated certain national
deliverances, and as such might be lawfully used. St. Paul himself
could eat the passover and cherish the feelings of a Jew, heartily
thankful to God for the deliverance from Egypt wrought out through
Moses centuries ago for his ancestors, and his mind could then go on
and rejoice over a greater deliverance still wrought out at this same
paschal season by a greater than Moses. St. Paul openly proclaimed the
lawfulness of the Jewish rites for Jews, but opposed their imposition
upon the Gentiles. He regarded them as _tolerabiles ineptiæ_, and
therefore observed them to please his weaker brethren; but sent his
Gentile converts on before, lest perhaps the sight of his own example
might weaken their faith and lead them to a compliance with that
Judaising party who were ever ready to avail themselves of any
opportunity to weaken St. Paul's teaching and authority. St. Paul
always strove to unite wisdom and prudence with faithfulness to
principle lest by any means his labour should be in vain.
St. Luke now joined St. Paul at Philippi, and henceforth gives his own
account of what happened on this eventful journey. From Philippi they
crossed to Troas. It was the spring-time, and the weather was more
boisterous than later in the year, and so the voyage took five days to
accomplish, while two days had sufficed on a previous occasion. They
came to Troas, and there remained for a week, owing doubtless to the
exigencies of the ship and its cargo. On the first day of the week St.
Paul assembled the Church for worship. The meeting was held on what we
should call Saturday evening; but we must remember that the Jewish
first day began from sundown on Saturday or the Sabbath.[220] This is
the first notice in the Acts of the observance of the Lord's day as
the time of special Christian worship. We have, however, earlier
notices of the first day in connexion with Christian observances. The
apostles, for instance, met together on the first day, as we are told
in John xx. 19, and again eight days after, as the twenty-sixth verse
of the same chapter tells. St. Paul's first Epistle to Corinth was
written twelve months earlier than this visit to Troas, and it
expressly mentions (ch. xvi. 2) the first day of the week as the time
ordered by St. Paul for the setting apart of the Galatian contribution
to the collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem; and so here again
at Troas we see that the Asiatic Christians observed the same solemn
time for worship and the celebration of the Eucharist. Such
glimpses--chance notices, we might call them, were there not a higher
Providence watching over the unconscious writer--show us how little we
can conclude from mere silence about the ritual, worship, and
government of the Apostolic Church,[221] and illustrate the vast
importance of studying carefully the extant records of the Christian
Church in the second century if we wish to gain fresh light upon the
history and customs of the apostolic age. If three or four brief texts
were blotted out of the New Testament, it would be quite possible to
argue from silence merely that the apostles and their immediate
followers did not observe the Lord's Day in any way whatsoever, and
that the custom of stated worship and solemn eucharistic celebrations
on that day were a corruption introduced in post-apostolic times. The
best interpreters of the New Testament are, as John Wesley long ago
well pointed out in his preface to his celebrated but now almost
unknown Christian Library, the apostolic fathers and the writers of
the age next following the apostles.[222] We may take it for a
certain rule of interpretation that, whenever we find a widely
established practice or custom mentioned in the writings of a
Christian author of the second century, it originated in apostolic
times. It was only natural that this should have been the case. We are
all inclined to venerate the past, and to cry it up as the golden age.
Now this tendency must have been intensified tenfold in the case of
the Christians of the second century. The first century was the time
of our Lord and the age of the apostles. Sacred memories clustered
thick round it, and every ceremony and rite which came from that time
must have been profoundly reverenced, while every new ceremony or
custom must have been rudely challenged, and its author keenly
scrutinised as one who presumptuously thought he could improve upon
the wisdom of men inspired by the Holy Ghost and miraculously gifted
by God. It is for this reason we regard the second-century doctors and
apologists as the best commentary upon the sacred writers, because in
them we see the Church of the apostolic age living, acting, displaying
itself amid the circumstances and scenes of actual life.
[220] There is to this day a trace of this custom in the Book of
Common Prayer in the rubric which prescribes that the collect for
Sunday shall be said on Saturday evening. In colleges, too,
according to Archbishop Laud's rules, surplices are worn on
Saturday evenings as well as on Sundays.
[221] See above, pp. 342 and 361, where I have pointed out the
dangerous character of the argument from mere silence. I may
perhaps recur to the example of Meyer, the eminent textual critic,
to illustrate my view of German critics stated in my first note to
this chapter, p. 386 above. Meyer is an exhaustive textual critic,
but as soon as he ventures on the region of history he falls into
this trap, and concludes from the argument of silence that Apollos
was never baptized with Christian baptism because he was so clever
and spiritually enlightened that he did not need it. But, then,
how does he account for the case of St. Paul? Was Apollos superior
to St. Paul? And yet he was baptized. But the illustrations of the
fallacies of this method of argumentation would be endless. If the
argument of silence is sufficient to prove a negative, what are we
to do with female communicants? There is not a single instance of
them in the New Testament. It is here, however, that the study of
the second-century writers is so valuable as illustrating the
silence of the first. See my note on p. 342 above.
[222] The Christian library was a series of fifty volumes which
Wesley published for the use of his followers. They were begun in
1749 and completed in 1755. "The opening volume contains, 1. The
Epistles of the apostolical fathers Clement, Ignatius, and
Polycarp, whom he believed to be endued with the extraordinary
assistance of the Holy Spirit, and whose writings, though not of
equal authority with the Holy Scriptures, are worthy of a much
greater respect than any composures that have been made since. 2.
The martyrdoms of Ignatius and Polycarp. 3. An extract from the
Homilies of Macarius, born about the year 301." See Tyerman's
_Life of Wesley_, ii. 25, 65-67.
Just let us take as an illustration the case of this observance of the
first day of the week. The Acts of the Apostles tells us but very
little about it, simply because there is but little occasion to
mention what must have seemed to St. Luke one of the commonest and
best-known facts. But Justin Martyr some eighty years later was
describing Christianity for the Roman Emperor. He was defending it
against the outrageous and immoral charges brought against it, and
depicting the purity, the innocency, and simplicity of its sacred
rites. Among other subjects dealt with, he touches upon the time when
Christians offered up formal and stated worship. It was absolutely
necessary therefore for him to treat of the subject of the Lord's Day.
In the sixty-seventh chapter of Justin's First _Apology_, we find him
describing the Christian weekly festival in words which throw back an
interesting light upon the language of St. Luke touching the Lord's
Day which St. Paul passed at Troas. Justin writes thus on this topic:
"Upon the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country
gather together unto one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the
writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when
the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts
to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and
pray, and as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine
and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers
and thanksgivings according to his ability, and the people assent,
saying Amen;[223] and there is a distribution to each, and a
participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those
who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And those who are
well to do and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is
collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans
and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in
want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among
us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the
day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first
day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter,
made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from
the dead." This passage gives us a full account of Christian customs
in the first half of the second century, when thousands must have been
still alive who remembered the times of the apostles, enabling us to
realise what must have been the character of the assembly and of the
worship in which St. Paul played a leading part at Troas.[224]
[223] Here we have an illustration of 1 Cor. xiv. 16: "Else if
thou bless with the Spirit, how shall he that filleth the place of
the unlearned say the Amen at the giving of thanks, seeing he
understandeth not what thou sayest?" See also ch. lxv. of Justin's
same _Apology_ for another reference to the Amen, and cf. _Apost.
Constitutions_, viii. 10; Cyril of Jerusalem, _Cat._, ch. v.;
Euseb., _H. E._, vi. 43 and vii. 9; Ambros. _De Sacrament._, iv.
4; Jerom., _Epist._, 62; Chrysost., _Hom._, xxxv. on 1st Cor.;
Bingham's _Antiqq._, XV. iii. 26; and the article on Amen in the
first volume of Smith's _Dict. Christ. Antiqq._ The preceding
chapters of Justin's _Apology_, lxv. and lxvi., are full of
information. They expressly state that in the Primitive Church no
unbaptized person was allowed to communicate, an elementary point
of Christian practice about which some persons and some Christian
societies seem at present very uncertain. Hooker's words, _Eccles.
Pol._, Book V. ch. lxvii., are very clear on this topic.
[224] The continuous character, the strong conservatism of the
early Christian Church receives an interesting illustration from
the history of the Sabbath as distinguished from the Lord's Day.
The Jewish Church gave the outward form to Christianity; and
though Christianity parted company with Judaism by the end of the
first century, yet the sacred character of the Sabbath was still
perpetuated among the Gentiles notwithstanding St. Paul's strong
language in Galatians and Colossians. In the fourth century the
Sabbath was observed in many places in the same manner as the
Lord's Day. St. Athanasius says: "We meet on the Sabbath, not
indeed being infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord
of the Sabbath." Timothy, one of his successors at Alexandria,
says that the Holy Communion was administered on the Sabbath as on
the Lord's Day, and that these two were the only days on which it
was celebrated in that city. In the time of St. Chrysostom the two
great weekly festivals were the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. It was
the same in the fifth century in the Egyptian monasteries, where
the services for Saturday and Sunday were exactly the same. See a
full account of this matter in Bingham's _Antiquities_, Book XIII.
ch. ix. sec. iii.
There was, however, a difference between the celebration at Troas and
the celebrations of which Justin Martyr speaks, though we learn not of
this difference from Justin himself, but from Pliny's letter to
Trajan, concerning which we have often spoken. St. Paul met the
Christians of Troas in the evening, and celebrated the Holy Communion
with them about midnight. It was the first day of the week according
to Jewish computation, though it was what we should call Saturday
evening. The ship in which the apostolic company was travelling was
about to sail on the morrow, and so St. Paul gladly joined the local
church in its weekly breaking of bread. It was exactly the same here
at Troas as reported by St. Luke, as it was at Corinth where the
evening celebrations were turned into occasions of gluttony and
ostentation, as St. Paul tells us in the eleventh of First
Corinthians. The Christians evidently met at this time in the evening
to celebrate the Lord's Supper. It has been often thought that St.
Paul, having referred just twelve months before in the First
Corinthian Epistle to the gross abuses connected with the evening
celebrations at Corinth, and having promised to set the abuses of
Corinth in order when he visited that church, did actually change the
time of the celebration of Holy Communion from the evening to the
morning, when he spent the three months there of which this chapter
speaks.[225] Perhaps he did make the change, but we have no
information on the point; and if he did make the change for Corinth,
it is evident that he did not intend to impose it as a rule upon the
whole Christian Church when a few weeks after leaving Corinth he
celebrated the Lord's Supper at Troas in the evening. By the second
century, however, the change had been made. Justin Martyr indeed does
not give a hint as to the time when Holy Communion was administered in
the passages to which we have referred. He tells us that none but
baptized persons were admitted to partake of it, but gives us no minor
details. Pliny, however, writing of the state of affairs in
Bithynia,--and it bordered upon the province where Troas was
situated,--tells us from the confession extracted out of apostate
Christians that "the whole of their fault lay in this, that they were
wont to meet together on a stated day, _before it was light_, and sing
among themselves alternately a hymn to Christ as God, and to bind
themselves by a sacrament (or oath) not to the commission of any
wickedness, but not to be guilty of theft or robbery or adultery."
After this early service they then separated, and assembled again in
the evening to partake of a common meal. The Agape or Love-Feast was
united with the Holy Communion in St. Paul's day. Experience, however,
showed that such a union must lead to grave abuses, and so in that
final consolidation which the Church received during the last quarter
of the first century, when the Lord's Second Coming was seen to be not
so immediate as some at first expected, the two institutions were
divided; the Holy Communion being appointed as the early morning
service of the Lord's Day, while the Agape was left in its original
position as an evening meal. And so have matters continued ever since.
The Agape indeed has almost died out. A trace of it perhaps remains in
the blessed bread distributed in Roman Catholic churches on the
Continent; while again the love-feasts instituted by John Wesley and
continued among his followers were an avowed imitation of this
primitive institution. The Agape continued indeed in vigorous
existence for centuries, but it was almost always found associated
with grave abuses. It might have been innocent and useful so long as
Christian love continued to burn with the fervour of apostolic days,
though even then, as Corinth showed, there were lurking dangers in it;
but when we reach the fourth and fifth centuries we find council after
council denouncing the evils of the Agape, and restricting its
celebration with such effect that during the Middle Ages it ceased to
exist as a distinctive Christian ordinance.[226] The change of the
Holy Communion to the earlier portion of the day took almost universal
effect, and that from the earliest times. Tertullian (_De Corona_,
iii.) testifies that in his time the Eucharist was received before
daybreak, though Christ had instituted it at a meal-time. Cyprian
witnesses to the same usage in his sixty-third Epistle, where he
speaks of Christ as instituting the Sacrament in the evening, that
"the very hour of the sacrifice might intimate the evening of the
world," but then describes himself as "celebrating the resurrection of
the Lord in the morning."[227] St. Augustine, as quoted above,
writing about 400, speaks of fasting communion as the general rule;
so general, indeed, that he regards it as having come down from
apostolic appointment. At the same time St. Augustine recognises the
time of its original institution, and mentions the custom of the
African Church which once a year had an evening communion on Thursday
before Easter in remembrance of the Last Supper and of our Lord's
action in connection with it. My own feeling on the matter is, that
early fasting communion when there is health and strength is far the
most edifying. There is an element of self-denial about it, and the
more real self-denial there is about our worship the more blessed will
that worship be. A worship that costs nothing in mind, body, or estate
is but a very poor thing to offer unto the Lord of the universe. But
there is no ground either in Holy Scripture or the history of the
primitive Church justifying an attempt to put a yoke on the neck of
the disciples which they cannot bear and to teach that fasting
communion is binding upon all Christians. St. Augustine speaks most
strongly in a passage we have already referred to (_Epist._ cxviii.,
_Ad Januar._) about the benefit of fasting communion; but he admits
the lawfulness of non-fasting participation, as does also that great
Greek divine St. Chrysostom, who quotes the examples of St. Paul and
of our Lord Himself in justification of such a course.[228]
[225] St. Augustine, in _Epist._, cxviii., _Ad Januar._, cc. vi.
vii., was one of the first to suggest this idea. The passage is
quoted by Bingham, _Antiqq._, XV. vii. 8.
[226] See the exhaustive article on Agapæ in Smith's _Dict.
Christ. Antiqq._, vol. i., p. 39.
[227] The early Christians celebrated the Holy Communion in memory
of Christ's resurrection as much as in memory of His death. The
resurrection of Christ was, in fact, the central point of their
belief and thought. This alone would have conduced to the practice
of early morning communion, even before day, inasmuch as it was at
that time the resurrection took place. Cf. _Dict. Christ.
Antiqq._, vol. i., p. 419, on the hours of celebration of the Holy
Communion. On p. 41 of the same volume the writer of the article
on the Agapæ makes an extraordinary statement that it was only at
the third Council of Carthage, A.D. 391, that the time of
Eucharistic celebration was changed to the morning, and that then
the Agape was first separated from the Holy Communion. The change
and the separation had taken place in Pliny's time, as I have
already shown.
[228] This whole subject of fasting communion is discussed at
length with all the authorities duly given in Bingham's
_Antiquities_, Book XV. ch. vii. sec. 8, whence I have taken my
references, and where he quotes Bishop Fell's Notes on Cyprian,
_Epist._ lxiii. p. 156, who says that "the custom of communicating
after supper lasted for a long time in the Church": cf. Socrates,
_H. E._, v. 22, and the _Dict. Christ. Antiqq._, vol. i., p. 417,
on _Fasting Reception of H. C._
The celebration of the Eucharist was not the only subject which
engaged St. Paul's attention at Troas. He preached unto the people as
well; and following his example we find from Justin Martyr's narrative
that preaching was an essential part of the communion office in the
days immediately following the apostles' age; and then, descending to
lower times still, we know that preaching is an equally essential
portion of the eucharistic service in the Western Church, the only
formal provision for a sermon according to the English liturgy being
the rubric in the service for the Holy Communion, which lays down that
after the Nicene Creed, "Then shall follow the sermon or one of the
Homilies already set forth, or hereafter to be set forth, by
authority." St. Paul's discourse was no mere mechanical homily,
however. He was not what man regarded as a powerful, but he was a
ready speaker, and one who carried his hearers away by the rapt
intense earnestness of his manner. His whole soul was full of his
subject. He was convinced that this was his last visit to the churches
of Asia. He foresaw too a thousand dangers to which they would be
exposed after his departure, and he therefore prolonged his sermon far
into the night, so far indeed that human nature asserted its claims
upon a young man named Eutychus, who sat in a window of the room where
they were assembled. Human nature indeed was never for a moment absent
from these primitive Church assemblies. If it was absent in one shape,
it was present in another, just as really as in our modern
congregations, and so Eutychus fell fast asleep under the
heart-searching exhortations of an inspired apostle, even as men fall
asleep under less powerful sermons of smaller men; and as the natural
result, sitting in a window left open for the sake of ventilation, he
fell down into the courtyard, and was taken up apparently lifeless.
St. Paul was not put out, however. He took interruptions in his work
as the Master took them. He was not upset by them, but he seized them,
utilised them, and then, having extracted the sweetness and
blessedness which they brought with them, he returned from them back
to his interrupted work. St. Paul descended to Eutychus, found him in
a lifeless state, and then restored him. Men have disputed whether the
Apostle worked a miracle on this occasion, or merely perceived that
the young man was in a temporary faint. I do not see that it makes any
matter which opinion we form. St. Paul's supernatural and miraculous
powers stand on quite an independent ground, no matter what way we
decide this particular case. It seems to me indeed from the language
of St. Paul--"Make ye no ado; for his life is in him"--that the young
man had merely fainted, and that St. Paul recognised this fact as soon
as he touched him. But if any one has strong opinions on the opposite
side I should be sorry to spend time disputing a question which has
absolutely no evidential bearing. The great point is, that Eutychus
was restored, that St. Paul's long sermon was attended by no fatal
consequences, and that the Apostle has left us a striking example
showing how that, with pastors and people alike, intense enthusiasm,
high-strung interest in the affairs of the spiritual world, can enable
human nature to rise superior to all human wants, and prove itself
master even of the conquering powers of sleep: "And when he was gone
up, and had broken the bread, and eaten, and had talked with them a
long while, even till break of day, so he departed."
We know nothing of what the particular topics were which engaged St.
Paul's attention at Troas, but we may guess them from the
subject-matter of the address to the elders of Ephesus, which takes up
the latter half of this twentieth chapter. Troas and Ephesus, in fact,
were so near and so similarly circumstanced that the dangers and
trials of both must have been much alike. He next passed from Troas to
Miletus. This is a considerable journey along the western shore of
Asia Minor. St. Paul was eagerly striving to get to Jerusalem by
Pentecost, or by Whitsuntide, as we should say. He had left Philippi
after Easter, and now there had elapsed more than a fortnight of the
seven weeks which remained available for the journey to Jerusalem. How
often St. Paul must have chafed against the manifold delays of the
trading vessel in which he sailed; how frequently he must have counted
the days to see if sufficient time remained to execute his purpose!
St. Paul, however, was a rigid economist of time. He saved every
fragment of it as carefully as possible. It was thus with him at
Troas. The ship in which he was travelling left Troas early in the
morning. It had to round a promontory in its way to the port of Assos,
which could be reached direct by St. Paul in half the time. The
Apostle therefore took the shorter route, while St. Luke and his
companions embarked on board the vessel. St. Paul evidently chose the
land route because it gave him a time of solitary communion with God
and with himself. He felt, in fact, that the perpetual strain upon his
spiritual nature demanded special spiritual support and refreshment,
which could only be obtained in the case of one who led such a busy
life by seizing upon every such occasion as then offered for
meditation and prayer. St. Paul left Troas some time on Sunday
morning. He joined the ship at Assos, and after three days' coasting
voyage landed at Miletus on Wednesday, whence he despatched a
messenger summoning the elders of the Church of Ephesus to meet
him.[229] The ship was evidently to make a delay of several days at
Miletus. We conclude this from the following reason. Miletus is a town
separated by a distance of thirty miles from Ephesus. A space
therefore of at least two days would be required in order to secure
the presence of the Ephesian elders. If a messenger--St. Luke, for
instance--started immediately on St. Paul's arrival at Miletus, no
matter how quickly he travelled, he could not arrive at Miletus sooner
than Thursday at midday. The work of collecting the elders and making
known to them the apostolic summons would take up the afternoon at
least, and then the journey to Ephesus either by land or water must
have occupied the whole of Friday. It is very possible that the sermon
recorded in this twentieth of Acts was delivered on the Sabbath,
which, as we have noted above, was as yet kept sacred by Christians as
well as by Jews, or else upon the Lord's Day, when, as upon that day
week at Troas, the elders of Ephesus had assembled with the Christians
of Miletus in order to commemorate the Lord's resurrection.
[229] The _Lives of St. Paul_ by Lewin and by Conybeare and Howson
enter into minute computations as to the days of the month upon
which the Apostle touched at the various towns mentioned in the
Acts. I can now merely refer the reader to these works for such
details about St. Paul's life, as they scarcely come within the
scope of an expositor's duty.
We have already pointed out that we know not the subject of St. Paul's
sermon at Troas, but we do know the topics upon which he enlarged at
Miletus, and we may conclude that, considering the circumstances of
the time, they must have been much the same as those upon which he
dwelt at Troas. Some critics have found fault with St. Paul's sermon
as being quite too much taken up with himself and his own vindication.
But they forget the peculiar position in which St. Paul was placed,
and the manner in which the truth of the gospel was then associated in
the closest manner with St. Paul's own personal character and
teaching. The Apostle was just then assailed all over the Christian
world wherever he had laboured, and even sometimes where he was only
known by name, with the most frightful charges; ambition, pride,
covetousness, deceit, lying, all these things and much more were
imputed to him by his opponents who wished to seduce the Gentiles from
that simplicity and liberty in Christ into which he had led them.
Corinth had been desolated by such teachers; Galatia had succumbed to
them; Asia was in great peril. St. Paul therefore, foreseeing future
dangers, warned the shepherds of the flock at Ephesus against the
machinations of his enemies, who always began their preliminary
operations by making attacks upon St. Paul's character. This
sufficiently explains the apologetic tone of St. Paul's address, of
which we have doubtless merely a brief and condensed abstract
indicating the subjects of a prolonged conversation with the elders of
Ephesus, Miletus, and such neighbouring churches as could be gathered
together. We conclude that St. Paul's conference on this occasion must
have been a long one for this reason. If St. Paul could find matter
sufficient to engage his attention for a whole night, from sundown
till sunrise, in a place like Troas, where he had laboured but a very
short time, how much more must he have found to say to the presbyters
of the numerous congregations which must have been flourishing at
Ephesus where he had laboured for years with such success as to make
Christianity a prominent feature in the social and religious life of
that idolatrous city!
Let us now notice some of the topics of this address. It may be
divided into four portions. The first part is retrospective, and
autobiographical; the second is prospective, and sets forth his
conception of his future course; the third is hortatory, expounding
the dangers threatening the Ephesian Church; and the fourth is
valedictory.
I. We have the biographical portion. He begins his discourse by
recalling to the minds of his hearers his own manner of life,--"Ye
yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, after
what manner I was with you all the time, serving the Lord with all
lowliness of mind, and with tears, and with trials which befell me by
the plots of the Jews"; words which show us that from the earliest
portion of his ministry at Ephesus, and as soon as they realised the
meaning of his message, the Jews had become as hostile to the Apostle
at Ephesus as they had repeatedly shown themselves at Corinth, again
and again making attempts upon his life. The foundations indeed of the
Ephesian Church were laid in the synagogue during the first three
months of his work, as we are expressly told in ch. xix. 8; but the
Ephesian Church must have been predominantly Gentile in its
composition, or else the language of Demetrius must have been
exaggerated and the riot raised by him meaningless. How could
Demetrius have said, "Ye see that at Ephesus this Paul hath persuaded
and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are
made with hands," unless the vast majority of his converts were drawn
from the ranks of those pagans who worshipped Diana? These words also
show us that during his extended ministry at Ephesus he was left at
peace by the heathen. St. Paul here makes no mention of trials
experienced from pagan plots. He speaks of the Jews alone as making
assaults upon his work or his person, incidentally confirming the
statement of ch. xix. 23, that it was only when he was purposing to
retire from Ephesus, and during the celebration of the Artemisian
games which marked his last days there, that the opposition of the
pagans developed itself in a violent shape.
St. Paul begins his address by fixing upon Jewish opposition outside
the Church as his great trial at Ephesus, just as the same kind of
opposition inside the Church had been his great trial at Corinth, and
was yet destined to be a source of trial to him in the Ephesian Church
itself, as we can see from the Pastoral Epistles. He then proceeds to
speak of the doctrines he had taught and how he had taught them;
reminding them "how that I shrank not from declaring unto you anything
that was profitable, and teaching you publicly, and from house to
house, testifying both to Jews and Greeks repentance toward God, and
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." St. Paul sets forth his manner of
teaching. He taught publicly, and public teaching was most effective
in his case, because he came armed with a double power, the powers of
spiritual and of intellectual preparation. St. Paul was not a man who
thought that prayer and spiritual life could dispense with thought
and mental culture. Or again, he would be the last to tolerate the
idea that diligent visitation from house to house would make up for
the neglect of that public teaching which he so constantly and so
profitably practised. Public preaching and teaching, pastoral
visitation and work, are two distinct branches of labour, which at
various periods of the Church's history have been regarded in very
different lights. St. Paul evidently viewed them as equally important,
the tendency in the present age is, however, to decry and neglect
preaching and to exalt pastoral work--including under that head Church
services--out of its due position. This is, indeed, a great and
lamentable mistake. The "teaching publicly" to which St. Paul refers
is the only opportunity which the majority of men possess of hearing
the authorised ministers of religion, and if the latter neglect the
office of public preaching, and think the fag end of a week devoted to
external and secular labours and devoid of any mental study and
preparation stirring the soul and refreshing the spirit, to be quite
sufficient for pulpit preparation, they cannot be surprised if men
come to despise the religion that is presented in such a miserable
light and by such inefficient ambassadors.[230]
[230] I do not think there is any greater want in the Church of
England than the revival of preaching. It is simply lamentable to
see the numbers who under usual circumstances will walk out of
church before the sermon, and still more lamentable to see the
number of men who do not go to church at all. This I attribute to
the low estate to which the ordinary sermon has fallen. In the
days of evangelical supremacy the pulpit may have been unduly
exalted; now it is unduly neglected, and with terrible results.
St. Paul insists in this passage on the publicity and boldness of his
teaching. There was no secrecy about him, no hypocrisy; he did not
come pretending one view or one line of doctrine, and then, having
stolen in secretly, teaching a distinct system. In this passage, which
may seem laudatory of his own methods, St. Paul is, in fact, warning
against the underhand and hypocritical methods adopted by the
Judaising party, whether at Antioch, Galatia, or Corinth. In this
division of his sermon St. Paul then sets forth the doctrines which
were the sum and substance of the teaching which he had given both
publicly and from house to house. They were repentance towards God,
and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, and that not only in the case
of the Jews, but also of the Greeks. Now here we shall miss the
implied reference of St. Paul, unless we emphasize the words "I shrank
not from declaring unto you anything that was profitable." His
Judaising opponents thought there were many other things profitable
for men besides these two points round which St. Paul's teaching
turned. They regarded circumcision and Jewish festivals, washings and
sacrifices, as very necessary and very profitable for the Gentiles;
while, as far as the Jews were concerned, they thought that the
doctrines on which St. Paul insisted might possibly be profitable, but
were not at all necessary. St. Paul impresses by his words the great
characteristic differences between the Ebionite view of Christ and of
Christianity and that catholic view which has regenerated society and
become a source of life and light to the human race.[231]
[231] I think I hear in St. Paul's words in this passage an echo
of the Epistle to the Romans which he had written a month or two
previously. The idea, "Repentance towards God, and faith towards
our Lord Jesus Christ," as the essence of Christianity is the
central idea of that Epistle.
II. We have, then, the prospective portion of his discourse. St. Paul
announces his journey to Jerusalem, and professes his ignorance of his
fate there. He was warned merely by the testimony of the Holy Spirit
that bonds and afflictions were his portion in every city. He was
prepared for them, however, and for death itself, so that he might
accomplish the ministry with which the Lord Jesus Christ had put him
in trust. He concluded this part of his address by expressing his
belief that he would never see them again. His work among them was
done, and he called them to witness that he was pure from the blood of
all men, seeing that he had declared unto them the whole counsel of
God. This passage has given rise to much debate, because of St. Paul's
statement that he knew that he should never see them again, while the
Epistles to Timothy and that to Titus prove that after St. Paul's
first imprisonment, with the notice of which this book of the Acts
ends, he laboured for several years in the neighbourhood of Asia
Minor, and paid lengthened visits to Ephesus.
We cannot now bestow space in proving this point, which will be found
fully discussed in the various Lives of St. Paul which we have so
often quoted: as, for instance, in Lewin, vol. ii., p. 94, and in
Conybeare and Howson, vol. ii., p. 547. We shall now merely indicate
the line of proof for this. In the Epistle to Philemon, ver. 22,
written during his first Roman imprisonment, and therefore years
subsequent to this address, he indicates his expectation of a speedy
deliverance from his bonds, and his determination to travel eastward
to Colossæ, where Philemon lived (cf. Philippians i. 25, ii. 24). He
then visited Ephesus, where he left Timothy, who had been his
companion in the latter portion of his Roman imprisonment (cf.
Philem. 1 and 1 Tim. i. 3), expecting soon to return to him in the
same city (1 Tim. iii. 14); while again in 2 Tim. i. 18 he speaks of
Onesiphorus having ministered to himself in Ephesus, and then in the
same Epistle (ch. iv. 20), written during his second Roman
imprisonment, he speaks of having just left Trophimus at Miletus sick.
This brief outline, which can be followed up in the volumes to which
we have referred, and especially in Appendix II. in Conybeare and
Howson on the date of the Pastoral Epistles, must suffice to prove
that St. Paul was expressing a mere human expectation when he told the
Ephesian elders that he should see their faces no more. St. Luke, in
fact, thus shows us that St. Paul was not omniscient in his knowledge,
and that the inspiration which he possessed did not remove him, as
some persons think, out of the category of ordinary men or free him
from their infirmities. The Apostle was, in fact, supernaturally
inspired upon occasions. The Holy Ghost now and again illuminated the
darkness of the future when such illumination was necessary for the
Church's guidance; but on other occasions St. Paul and his brother
apostles were left to the guidance of their own understandings and to
the conclusions and expectations of common sense, else why did not St.
Peter and St. John read the character of Ananias and Sapphira or of
Simon Magus before their sins were committed? why did St. Peter know
nothing of his deliverance from Herod's prison-house before the angel
appeared, when his undissembled surprise is sufficient evidence that
he had no expectation of any such rescue? These instances, which might
be multiplied abundantly out of St. Paul's career and writings, show
us that St. Paul's confident statement in this passage was a mere
human anticipation which was disappointed by the course of events. The
supernatural knowledge of the apostles ran on precisely the same lines
as their supernatural power. God bestowed them both for use according
as He saw fit and beneficial, but not for common ordinary every-day
purposes, else why did St. Paul leave Trophimus at Miletus sick, or
endure the tortures of his own ophthalmia, or exhort Timothy to take a
little wine on account of his bodily weakness, if he could have healed
them all by his miraculous power? Before we leave this point we may
notice that here we have an incidental proof of the early date of the
composition of the Acts. St. Luke, as we have often maintained, wrote
this book about the close of St. Paul's first imprisonment. Assuredly
if he had written it at a later period, and above all, if he wrote it
twenty years later, he would have either modified the words of his
synopsis of St. Paul's speech, or else given us a hint that subsequent
events had shown that the Apostle was mistaken in his expectations, a
thing which he could easily have done, because he cherished none of
these extreme notions about St. Paul's office and dignity which have
led some to assume that it was impossible for him ever to make a
mistake about the smallest matters.[232]
[232] See on this point Dr. Salmon's _Introduction to New
Testament_, 4th ed., p. 445.
III. This discourse, again, is hortatory, and its exhortations contain
very important doctrinal statements. St. Paul begins this third
division with an exhortation like that which our Lord gave to His
apostles under the same circumstances, "Take heed unto yourselves."
The Apostle never forgot that an effective ministry of souls must be
based on deep personal knowledge of the things of God. He knew, too,
from his own experience that it is very easy to be so completely taken
up with the care of other men's souls and the external work of the
Church, as to forget that inner life which can only be kept alive by
close communion with God. Then, having based his exhortations on their
own spiritual life, he exhorts the elders to diligence in the pastoral
office: "Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in the which
the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the Church of God, which
He purchased with His own blood." St. Paul in these words shows us his
estimate of the ministerial office. The elders of Ephesus had been all
ordained by St. Paul himself with the imposition of hands, a rite that
has ever been esteemed essential to ordination. It was derived from
the Jewish Church, and was perpetuated into the Christian Church by
that same spirit of conservatism, that law of continuity which in
every department of life enacts that everything shall continue as it
was unless there be some circumstance to cause an alteration.[233] Now
there was no cause for alteration in this case; nay, rather there was
every reason to bring about a continuance of this custom, because
imposition of hands indicates for the people the persons ordained, and
assures the ordained themselves that they have been individually
chosen and set apart. But St. Paul by these words teaches us a higher
and nobler view of the ministry. He teaches us that he was himself but
the instrument of a higher power, and that the imposition of hands was
the sign and symbol to the ordained that the Holy Ghost had chosen
them and appointed them to feed the flock of God. St. Paul here shows
that in ordination, as in the sacraments, we should by faith look away
beyond and behind the human instrument, and view the actions of the
Church of Christ as the very operations and manifestations in the
world of time and sense of the Holy Ghost Himself, the Lord and Giver
of life. He teaches the Ephesian elders, in fact, exactly what he
taught the Corinthian Church some few months earlier, "We have this
treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power
may be of God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. iv. 7); the treasure
and the power were everything, the only things, in fact, worth naming,
the earthen vessels which contained them for a little time were
nothing at all. How awful, solemn, heart-searching a view of the
ministerial office this was! How sustaining a view when its holders
are called upon to discharge functions for which they feel themselves
all inadequate in their natural strength! Is it any wonder that the
Church, taking the same view as St. Paul did, has ever held and taught
that the ministerial office thus conferred by supernatural power is no
mere human function to be taken up or laid down at man's pleasure, but
is a life-long office to be discharged at the holder's peril,--a
savour of life unto life for the worthy recipient, a savour of death
unto death for the unworthy and the careless.
[233] This rule or law is the principle of Butler's great argument
for a future life in the first chapter of his _Analogy_. He
expressly states in the following words, "There is in every case a
probability that things will continue as we experience they are,
in all respects, except those in which we have some reason to
think they will be altered. This is that kind of presumption of
probability from analogy expressed in the word continuance which
seems our only natural reason for believing the course of the
world will continue to-morrow as it has done so far back as our
experience or knowledge of history can carry us back."
In connexion with this statement made by St. Paul concerning the
source of the ministry we find a title given to the Ephesian
presbyters round which much controversy has centred. St. Paul says,
"Take heed unto the flock, over which the Holy Ghost has made you
_bishops_." I do not, however, propose to spend much time over this
topic, as all parties are now agreed that in the New Testament the
term presbyter and bishop are interchangeable and applied to the same
persons.[234] The question to be decided is not about a name, but
about an office, whether, in fact, any persons succeeded in apostolic
times to the office of rule and government exercised by St. Paul and
the rest of the apostles, as well as by Timothy, Titus, and the other
delegates of the Apostle, and whether the term bishop, as used in the
second century, was applied to such successors of the apostles.[235]
This, however, is not a question which comes directly within the
purview of an expositor of the Acts of the Apostles, as the
appointment of Timothy and Titus to manage the affairs of the Church
in Ephesus and in Crete lies beyond the period covered by the text of
the Acts, and properly belongs to the commentary on the Pastoral
Epistles. St. Paul's words in this connexion have, however, an
important bearing on fundamental doctrinal questions connected with
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. St. Paul speaks of the presbyters
as called "to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His
own blood." These words are very strong, so strong indeed that various
readings have been put forward to mitigate their force. Some have read
"Lord" instead of "God," others have substituted Christ for it; but
the Revised Version, following the text of Westcott and Hort, have
accepted the strongest form of the verse on purely critical ground,
and translates it as "the Church of God, which He hath purchased with
His own blood." This passage, then, is decisive as to the
Christological views of St. Luke and the Pauline circle generally.
They believed so strongly in the deity of Jesus Christ and His
essential unity with the Father that they hesitated not to speak of
His sacrifice on Calvary as a shedding of the blood of God, an
expression which some fifty years afterwards we find in the Epistle of
Ignatius to the Ephesians, where St. Ignatius speaks of them as
"kindled into living fire by the blood of God," and a hundred years
later still, in Tertullian, _Ad Uxor._, ii. 3. This passage has been
used in scientific theology as the basis of a principle or theory
called the "Communicatio Idiomatum," a theory which finds an
illustration in two other notable passages of Scripture, St. John iii.
13 and 1 Cor. ii. 8. In the former passage our Lord says of Himself,
"No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of
heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven," where the Son of man
is spoken of as in heaven as well as upon earth at the same time,
though the Son of man, according to His humanity, could only be in one
place at a time. In the second passage St. Paul says, "Which none of
the rulers of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not
have crucified the Lord of Glory," where crucifixion is attributed to
the Lord of Glory, a title derived from His Divine nature. Now the
term "Communicatio Idiomatum," or "transference of peculiar
properties," is given to this usage because in all these texts the
properties of the nature pertaining either to God or to man are spoken
of as if they belonged to the other; or, to put it far better in the
stately language of Hooker, v. liii. where he speaks of "those cross
and circulatory speeches wherein there are attributed to God such
things as belong to manhood, and to man such as properly concern the
deity of Jesus Christ, the cause whereof is the association of natures
in one subject. A kind of mutual commutation there is, whereby those
concrete names, God and man, when we speak of Christ, do take
interchangeably one another's room, so that for truth of speech it
skilleth not whether we say that the Son of God hath created the world
and the Son of man by His death hath saved it, or else that the Son of
man did create and the Son of God die to save the world." This is a
subject of profound speculative and doctrinal interest, not only in
connexion with the apostolic view of our Lord's Person, but also in
reference to the whole round of methodised and scientific theology. We
cannot, however, afford further space for this subject. We must be
content to have pointed it out as an interesting topic of inquiry,
and, merely referring the reader to Hooker and to Liddon's Bampton
Lectures (Lect. V.) for more information, must hurry on to a
conclusion. St. Paul terminates this part of his discourse with
expressing his belief in the rapid development of false doctrines and
false guides as soon as his repressive influence shall have been
removed; a belief which the devout student of the New Testament will
find to have been realised when in 1 Tim. i. 20, in 2 Tim. i. 15, and
ii. 17, 18 he finds the Apostle warning the youthful Bishop of Ephesus
against Phygelus and Hermogenes, who had turned all Asia away from St.
Paul, and against Hymenæus, Philetus, and Alexander, who had imbibed
the Gnostic error concerning matter, which had already led the
Corinthians to deny the future character of the Resurrection. St. Paul
then terminates his discourse with a solemn commendation of the
Ephesian elders to that Divine grace which is as necessary for an
apostle as for the humblest Christian. He exhorts them to
self-sacrifice and self-denial, reminding them of his own example,
having supported himself and his companions by his labour as a
tentmaker at Ephesus, and above all of the words of the Lord Jesus,
which they apparently knew from some source which has not come down to
us, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
[234] Irenæus, however, writing in the second century, states that
the bishops and presbyters of Ephesus and the neighbouring cities
were assembled at Miletus, so that he distinguishes between
bishops and presbyters even on this occasion: see his work
_Against Heresies_, iii. 14. Dr. Hatch had an extraordinary
theory, which he elaborates in his article "Priest" in the
_Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, vol. ii., p. 1700. He thus
states it: "Whether the institution of Presbyters existed in the
first instance outside the limits of the Judæo-Christian
communities is doubtful. There is no evidence that it did so; the
presumption is that it did not, for when St. Paul, writing to the
churches which were presumably non-Jewish in their character,
recognises the existence of church officers, he designates them by
other names: προϊστάμενοι (1 Thess. v. 12), ἐπίσκοποι (Philip. i.
1)." To put it briefly, his idea is that bishop as a title was
confined to predominantly Greek communities, and presbyter as a
title was confined to predominantly Gentile communities. Will this
theory and the instances he gives stand the test of facts?
Philippi was, he thinks, a predominantly Gentile Church, so
thoroughly Gentile that its members would necessarily prefer
titles drawn from impure pagan sources rather than from
Judaism. But was Philippi so thoroughly Gentile? If so, why did
St. Paul stay there and celebrate the days of unleavened bread and
the passover, as we have above noted? A large element in the
church must have been Jewish when this happened. Again, take
Thessalonica. We have already noted that the majority of that
church must have been Gentile in origin; but there must have been
a large and influential minority Jewish by race in a town where
the Jews were so large an element in the population. Again, we
find the title presbyter applied to the church officials of
Ephesus. Dr. Hatch on the same page enumerates Ephesus among the
Judæo-Christian communities, one, therefore, which would
presumably prefer Jewish titles for its clergy. But was it
predominantly Jewish? St. Paul laboured three months in the
synagogue at Ephesus, and was then expelled. He laboured there for
two years among the Gentiles with such success, that Demetrius
describes him as having turned away all Asia from Diana's worship.
Surely if ever there was a Gentile Christian Church it was
Ephesus! (Cf. Ephes. ii. and iii., where the Gentile character of
the Ephesian Church is expressly asserted.) Yet here we have the
title presbyter in use. Dr. Hatch's is not scientific historical
reasoning, but the exercise of what Bishop Butler well designates,
that delusive faculty called man's imagination and fancy. Upon
this whole question of the origin of Christian presbyters, I may
notice an exhaustive Biblical inquiry, called "The Ruling Elder,"
by the Rev. Robert King of Ballymena, the learned author of a
well-known Irish Church History. It appeared after this chapter
was written.
[235] In the second century bishops were often called presbyters,
though presbyters were not called bishops, or, to quote Bishop
Lightfoot, "Essay on the Ministry," _Philippians_, p. 226: "In the
language of Irenæus, a presbyter is never designated a bishop,
while on the other hand he very frequently speaks of a bishop as a
presbyter." This usage long continued in the Church. Cyprian often
expresses himself thus: cf. article on word "Senior" in _Dict.
Christ. Antiqq._ Many instances of it occur in the literature of
the early Celtic Church in Ireland, which was an offshoot of the
Gallican Church and, through Gaul, of the Church of Western Asia
Minor. In fact, this custom of calling bishops seniors or
presbyters was used in Ireland till the twelfth century: see
Ussher's Works, Ed. Elrington, vi. 517, 528. St. Bernard, for
instance, in his Life of St. Malachy, calls the Bishop of Lismore
"Senior Lesmorensis." I do not, as I have said, propose to enter
any further into the debateable subject of Church government; but
as I have come across this passage, and as I have already
announced that I am writing this commentary as a decided
Churchman, I may be permitted to state my own views, as history
seems to me to set them forth, without entering into any
discussion on the point. During the apostolic age the terms bishop
and presbyter were interchangeable. As the apostles passed away,
they seem to me to have established Episcopacy as the normal rule
of the Church, though, doubtless, it was only by degrees that the
title of bishop was appropriated to the office so created. By the
time of Ignatius, that is, about 110 A.D., this appropriation was
complete. As regards my authority for saying the apostles
established Episcopacy, I simply appeal to Irenæus, who, in his
great work against Heresies, Book III., ch. iii., states in
section i. that "the apostles instituted bishops in the churches,"
and then in sec. 3 proceeds to trace the line of these bishops in
the Roman Church, beginning with Linus, "into whose hands the
blessed apostles committed the office of the Episcopate." Now it
is upon Irenæus we largely depend for the proof of the canon of
the New Testament and the Johannine origin of the Fourth Gospel.
Surely if Irenæus is a witness sufficient to establish the
apostolic origin of the Gospels, he should be quite sufficient to
establish the apostolic origin of Episcopacy! If Irenæus is a
competent witness to the true authorship of an anonymous document
like the Fourth Gospel, he is surely competent to tell us of the
true origin of a worldwide institution like Episcopacy. It is
assuredly much easier to learn the origin of institutions than of
documents.
When the Apostle had thus terminated his address, which doubtless was
a very lengthened one, he knelt down, probably on the shore, as we
shall find him kneeling in the next chapter (xxi. 5, 6) on the shore
at Tyre. He then commended them in solemn prayer to God, and they all
parted in deep sorrow on account of the final separation which St.
Paul's words indicated as imminent; for though the primitive
Christians believed in the reality of the next life with an intensity
of faith of which we have no conception, and longed for its peace and
rest, yet they gave free scope to those natural affections which bind
men one to another according to the flesh and were sanctified by the
Master Himself when He wept by the grave of Lazarus. Christianity is
not a religion of stoical apathy, but of sanctified human affections.