[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.
[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.
[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.
[232] See on this point Dr. Salmon's Introduction to New Testament, 4th ed., p. 445.
[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."
[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), ἐπίσκοροι (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.
[236] Thus in ch. xxiv. 10-16 he enlarges upon the subject of "the Way which they call a sect," a topic and a name fully discussed above on pp. 32, 33.
[237] See Lightfoot's Ignatius, vol. i., p. 452, upon the presence of Jews in the towns and cities of Proconsular Asia. Antiochus the Great transported two thousand Jewish families to these parts from Babylonia and Mesopotamia.
[238] Inscriptions, according to Josephus, were graven in Greek and Latin on stones fixed in a wall or balustrade which ran round the Temple, warning the Gentiles not to enter on pain of death: see Josephus, Wars, V. v. 2; Antiqq., XV. xi. 5. One of these stones was discovered some twenty years ago by M. Clermont Ganneau, with the inscription intact. It had been buried in the ground on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, where this learned Frenchman discovered it. A transcript of it can now be seen in Lewin's St. Paul, ii. 133. The inscription literally translated runs thus: "No alien to pass within the balustrade round the Temple and the inclosure. Whosoever shall be caught (so doing) must blame himself for the death that will ensue." This stone must often have been read by our Lord and His apostles, as they frequented the temple.