On leaving Italy after this release, he seems to have directed
his course eastward; but nothing whatever is known of his motions,
except that from the epistle of Titus it is learned that he journeyed
to Miletus, to Ephesus, to Troas, to Macedonia, to Crete and to
Epirus,――and last of all, probably, to Rome. His first movements on
his release were, doubtless, in conformity with his previous designs,
as expressed in his epistles. He probably went first to Asia, visiting
Ephesus, Miletus, Colosse, &c. On this voyage he might have left
Titus in Crete, (as specified in his letter to that minister,) and
on embarking for Macedonia, left Timothy at Ephesus, (as mentioned in
the first epistle to him.) After visiting Philippi and other places in
Macedonia, where he wrote to Timothy, he seems to have crossed over the
country to the shore of the Ionian sea, to Nicopolis, whence he wrote
to Titus, to come from Crete, and join him there. These two epistles,
being of a merely personal character, containing instructions for the
exercise of the apostolic functions of ordination, &c. in the absence
of Paul, can not need any particular historical notice, being so simple
in their object that they sufficiently explain themselves. Respecting
that to Timothy, however, it may be specified that some of its peculiar
expressions seem to be aimed at the rising heresy of the Jewish and
Oriental mystics, who were then infecting the eastern churches with the
first beginnings of that heresy which, under the name of the GNOSIS, or
_science_, (falsely so called,) soon after corrupted with its dogmas,
a vast number in Asia Minor, Greece and Syria. The style and tenor of
both of the epistles are so different from all Paul’s other writings,
as to make it very evident that they were written at a different time,
and under very different circumstances from the rest.