s simply
intimated that he was individually commissioned to undertake the
service. And though there were other ministers at Ephesus and Crete,
Paul reminds Timothy and Titus that he had left them there to perform
specific duties, and thus urges upon them the consideration of their
personal responsibility. Though surrounded by so many apostles and
evangelists, he tells us that there rested on himself daily "the care of
all the churches;" [241:3] for he believed that the whole commonwealth
of the saints had a claim on his prayers, his sympathy, and his
services; and he desired to cherish in the hearts of his young brethren
the same feeling of individual obligation. Hence, in these Pastoral
Epistles, he gives his correspondents minute instructions respecting all
the departments of the ministerial office, and reminds them how much
depends on their personal faithfulness. Hence he here points out to them
how they are to deport themselves in public and in private; [241:4] as
preachers of the Word, and as members of church judicatories; [241:5]
towards the rich and the poor, masters and slaves, young men and widows.
[242:1] But there is not a single advice addressed to Timothy and Titus
in any of these three epistles which may not be appropriately given to
any ordinary minister of the gospel, or which necessarily implies that
either of these evangelists exercised exclusive ecclesiastical authority
in Ephesus or Crete. [242:2]

The legend that Timothy and Titus were the bishops respectively of
Ephesus and Crete appears to have been invented about the beginning of
the fourth century, and at a time when the original constitution of the
Church had been completely, though silently, revolutionized. [242:3] It
is obvious that, when the Pastoral Epistles were written, these
ministers were not permanently located in the places with which their
names have been thus associated. [242:4] The apostle John resided
principally at Ephesus during the last thirty years of the first
century; [242:5] so that, according to this tale, the beloved disciple
must have been nearly all this time under the ecclesiastical supervision
of Timothy! The story otherwise exhibits internal marks of absurdity and
fabrication. It would lead us to infer that Paul must have distributed
most unequally the burden of official labour; for whilst Timothy is said
to have presided over the Christians of a single city, Titus is
represented as invested with the care of a whole