Timothy was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium; wherefore Paul received him as his companion in the ministry of the holy Gospel among the Gentiles. Acts 16:2,3.
Paul loved him with a godly love, and called him his dearly beloved son in the Lord. 2 Tim. 1:2. He afterwards appointed him bishop or teacher of the church, and commended to him the flock of Jesus his Savior, with the admonition, uprightly to feed and govern the same; to which end he wrote two special epistles to him.
“O Timothy,” he writes, “keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” 1 Tim. 6:20.
Further: “This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee . . . through faith and a good conscience.” 1:18.
In another place: “Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” 2 Tim. 2:1,2.
In this ministry Timothy acquitted himself as an upright evangelical preacher, until it pleased God, to let him finish his course, not by a common death, but by martyrdom; so that he, with his spiritual father Paul, who had steadfastly preceded him, and especially with his Lord Christ Jesus, who had gone through the conflict many years before, might enjoy the unfading crown of honor in the life of bliss. Thus it happened afterwards, according to history, that, having been bishop at Ephesus for fifteen years, he was there stoned to death by the heathen, whose idolatry he had reproved. This is stated to have taken place in the reign of Domitian, or about A. D. 98, though some have fixed it in the time of Nero. Joh. Gysii Hist. Mart., fol. 14, col. 4, also, Bybelsch Naembock, letter T. on the name Timothy, fol. 925, col. 102.
URTICINUS, A PIOUS CHRISTIAN, BEHEADED WITH THE AX, AT RAVENNA, A. D. 99.
Next to Timothy is placed Urticinus or Ursinius, a physician at Ravenna in Italy. Having been reported to the Judge Paulinus, as being a Christian, he was tortured in manifold ways for the name of Christ. Having borne all with constancy, and still refusing to sacrifice to the gods of the heathen, he was finally sentenced by the judge, to be beheaded with the ax.
When Urticinus received this sentence of death, he began to tremble and shake before the impending death, and to deliberate with himself, whether he should deny Christ, or how he might the most easily escape death.
But while he was thus counseling with flesh and blood, one of the company of Judge Paulinus, whose name was Vitalus, stepped up to him from behind, and strengthened him with these words: “My beloved brother in Christ, Urticinus, who, as a faithful physician, by thy potions, didst so often and so happily restore to health the sick, take heed, lest by thy denial thou plunge thyself into eternal death and damnation.”