above that, in which he had originally created them. He might, and indeed did, select or single them out for some peculiar purpose; as when he sent Gabriel to Mary, &c. &c. &c. But it would be contrary to the usual Scriptural Phraseology to call them on this account elect. Thus St. Jude, when he speaks of the rebel Angels, tells us that "they kept not their first estate." Hence we conclude, that they were created what they were, as Archangels or otherwise at the beginning, and that the different angelic Hierarchies suffered no posterior change, except that of falling from their respective dignities. My own interpretation I thus endeavour to defend. In my note on the 2d number I observed that Crispus was a converted Chief of the Synagogue, resident at Corinth, and thence deduced an argument that it was with a view not to offend converts of such consequence that St. Paul commanded women to veil their heads when they appeared in a Christian congregation, consisting of Jewish as well as Gentile proselytes; and I think it also highly probable that in the text before us, St. Paul added these personages to the solemn charge, which he gave to Timothy, not to ordain Ministers, or give any promotion or office in the Church without observing the strictest impartiality; because such men, of all others, would be the most offended, if they observed him culpable in this discharge of his Pastoral function. I have said also before, that St. Paul, when he used the term Ayyɛλos, accompanied it with an epithet, when meaning celestial beings, especially in his Epistolary correspondence with his Gentile converts, but less, if at all so, when writing to those of Jewish extraction. Thus, in the last number, writing to Timothy, he uses it without an epithet, seen of angels, because, though he takes it in what I would call the Ethnical sense as a word which they had translated and adopted from the Hebrew, and not as meaning a heavenly Being, he knew Timothy, being a Jew, would rightly understand it: yet in this place he accompanies it with one, viz. ɛxλENTOS, chosen, i. e. because converted, to difference his meaning from the former, where the term Ayyɛxos predicates an unconverted person, as I have there mentioned. I therefore incline to think, that to understand the passage thus is more easy and pertinent than either of the former explanations. But if we rest upon Mosheim's authority as quoted in the introductory part of this Essay, and believe with him that the title of Angel preceded that of Bishop in the early Christian Church, as denoting a principal personage in the congregation, and in the same sense, in which St. John decidedly uses it; then it might seem no improbable conjecture, that St. Paul, in the text before us, uses it in the same identical sense. It appears however from the preceding chapter, that Bishops either were, or were to be, elected in the Church of Ephesus, because the Apostle there specifies what sort of character the person ought to have, who was elected into that office, and as he does not say more than that "if a man desireth the office of a Bishop, he desireth a good thing," it might favour Mosheim's opinion, that Bishops were posterior in point of time of election to Ayyλo, and that probably St. Paul permitted Timothy then, for the first time, to elect them. Yet as St. Paul wrote his Epistles many years before St. John wrote his Apocalypse, and as the former never applies the term Ayyλos to a Christian congregational President, my opinion is that in this text, as in all the former, he rather means a President of the Jewish Synagogue; though here one who is converted to Christianity, and therefore of greater consequence and authority than a common Jew, who had held no such office in that Synagogue, from whence he had seceded before he became a member of the Christian Fraternity. |