Ghost had made them bishops (exoxoxovs) of that church. Those elders had previously received the powers which were necessary to ordaining others; on Timothy a similar presbytery laid their hands at his ordination. If this circumstance will not show that a presbytery could have ordained an evangelist, an apostle not being present, because evangelists were extraordinary officers of a higher grade; yet it must prove that a presbytery have some power to ordain. They were the highest fixed officers in a church, and the power of ordination was necessary to their succession. They could not have been appointed coadjutors to Timothy, in the ordination of themselves. And it does not appear they were ordained before the riot, when he was left at Ephesus. If thus there were no officers in that church when Paul left it, the direction to Timothy, who was an evangelist, to ordain bishops, that is, elders in Ephesus, was to do no more than his duty; which, when accomplished in any church, gave such bishops, or elders, power to continue the succession. If the presbyters of particular churches had not the power of ordination, there has been no succession in the church of Christ since the deaths of the apostles and evangelists; for their offices expired with them and there were no officers of a higher order. The office of Timothy was given to him prior to his visiting Ephesus. The duty assigned him was afterwards declared to be the work of an evangelist. 2 Tim. iv. 5. His appointment to Ephesus was temporary, being limited, at the farthest, to the time when Paul should come to him; but an earlier period of its termination was evidently left to his discretion, which he exercised by coming to Paul into Macedonia. Thus there was a disruption of the connexion, if any had been fixed; but none such was intended; the epistle was neither a commission, nor an ordination, but a mere letter of instruction, directing him in the

discharge of his high and important office of evangelist.

If Timothy returned to Ephesus from Rome, which is not recorded in the Scriptures, and died there, it will not establish that he ever exercised, or had any other office, than that of an evangelist.

SECTION XXVI.

TITUS WAS ALSO AN EXTRAORDINARY OFFICER, AND NOT A BISHOP OF CRETE.

He was Paul's attendant or evangelist, before the Gospel was carried to Crete. —Apollos is named in the epistle to Titus, but as they first saw Apollos on Paul's last visit to Ephesus, it was written after that visit.-Every movement of Paul, from the riot at Ephesus unto his first imprisonment, is given, and events show he did not leave him in Crete before he went to Rome.-His letters from Rome discover that Titus was not with him during his first imprisonment, and of course he could not have left him in Crete on his return from Rome.-Titus had been with Paul at Jerusalem, but after separating from Barnabas, he was no more with Paul till his second visit to Ephesus ; probably he was sent with the letter to the Galatians, and met Paul at Ephesus on his last visit there, from whence Paul sent him to Corinth, and he came to Paul in Macedonia, and was sent back to Corinth.-At some period after his first imprisonment, they may have gone to Crete; and Titus being left there, received this letter as a discharge from thence, when a substitute arrived. He was at Nicopolis one winter with Paul; and the Scriptures leave him in Dalmatia.

WHEN Paul and Titus first went to Crete, before any church had been planted on the island, Titus must have been an attendant upon Paul, and a preacher, without any relation unto, or connexion with, the Cretans. Some have been of opinion, that Paul, after his liberation, sailed from Rome into Asia, and taking Crete in his way, left Titus there. But it does not appear, that Titus went to Rome with Paul, when he was carried a prisoner to be tried by Cæsar. Nor do any of the letters written from Rome, during that imprisonment, to the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, or Philemon, mention Titus, or even imply that he was at Rome. On the contrary, his presence with

Paul is excluded by Colossians iv. 11, “These only are my fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God, which have been a comfort unto me;" and Titus is not named as one of them.

That Paul purposed to visit Colosse, soon after his liberation, appears from his letter to Philemon, ver. 22. But the bespeaking of lodgings there would have been premature, if it had been intended consequent upon the arduous labors of planting churches in Crete. The epistle to Philemon preceded the letter to the Hebrews; in that, Timothy was joined; in this, he is mentioned as absent; "with whom if he come shortly,” xiii. 23, Paul promised to see those to whom the letter was sent. He had gone, probably, to Philippi, Phil. ii. 19. This purpose of visiting Judea was, therefore, after his direction to Philemon to procure him lodgings at Colosse. Accordingly, some have imagined, that Paul went, with Timothy and Titus, to Crete, where he left Titus, and proceeded to Judea, returned through Syria and Cilicia, tarried some time at Colosse, wrote from thence to Titus in Crete to meet him at Nicopolis, came to Ephesus, left Timothy there, and proceeded to Macedonia. But neither does Titus appear to have been with Paul at Rome, during his imprisonment, nor is there the least evidence that such a journey was ever undertaken or accomplished. It was the opinion of Pool, that Paul left Titus in Crete, when he touched there a prisoner, on his passage to Rome. But as Titus is not named in the enumeration of either of the companies who left Macedonia for Jerusalem; nor mentioned in the history of their going to, remaining at, or coming from Jerusalem; nor spoken of in the account of the voyage, two years afterwards accomplished from Cæsaria to Rome, this opinion seems unfounded. It does not even appear, that Paul landed at Crete on that voyage.

Many have thought Paul, at or prior to the period of his separation from Barnabas, sailed with Silas and Titus from Cilicia to Crete, and returning to the

Asiatic continent, left Titus to perfect the settlement of the churches. But there is no hint of such a thing in the Acts or any of the Epistles. Yet the native language of Titus was that of the inhabitants of Crete. Also, Titus, who was in years and office older than Timothy, and commanded more respect, must have been as competent for that service, as he was to settle the differences in the Corinthian church, or to preach the gospel among the rude inhabitants of Dalmatia. But conjectures are as unprofitable, as endless. Paul took Titus to Jerusalem with him and Barnabas, when the exoneration of Gentile converts was determined, Gal. ii. 1, and though a Gentile, he was not required to be circumcised, ver. 3. But we cannot collect from the Scriptures, that Titus was with Paul from the time of his separation from Barnabas, during all his travels through Asia, Macedonia, and Greece, his subsequent voyage to Jerusalem, and return through the Asiatic churches; nor until he came to Ephesus, when Apollos, from Corinth, met him at that place But Titus was then at Ephesus, for Paul sent him thence with his first epistle to the Corinthians. He might have been previously sent with the epistle to the Galatians, and when Paul came to them, have gone down with the apostle and his company to Ephesus.

There is also great difficulty in ascertaining when the epistle to Titus was written. Some place it before the imprisonment of Paul, as Lightfoot, Lardner, and other learned critics. But though we will neither mark the precise time for Paul's going with Titus into Crete, nor the particular winter which they spent together at Nicopolis after the recall of Titus from that island; yet it appears to be correct to assign them, and the writing of the epistle to Titus, which was not from Nicopolis, Titus iii. 12, to a period after the apostle's enlargement at Rome, and prior to his return.

From the direction, Tit. iii. 13, to bring Apollos, Paul was then acquainted with him, but he was not

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