The life and work of St. Paul

654 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
may not, through the cloudy fumes of pride, fall into the devil's judgment 1
He must be well thought of by his Pagan neighbours, that he may not fall
into disrepute, and the devil's snare which such loss of character involves. 2
Deacons, too, must be grave, straightforward, sober, not avaricious, sound
in faith, and pure of conscience ; and their freedom from reproach must be
tested before they are appointed.*
Deaconesses * must be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful. The domestic
relations of deacons and deaconesses must be irreproachable; for an
honourable diaconate secures an honourable position, 5 and boldness in the
faith.'
" These things I write to thee, though I hope to come to you unexpectedly
soon ; 7 but in order that, if I am delayed, thou mayest know how to bear thyself in
the house of God seeing that it is the Church of God as a pillar and basis of the
truth."
" And confessedly great is the mystery of godliness who was *
" Manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen of angels,
Preached among the Gentiles.
Believed on in the world,
Taken up in 18
glory."
1 These Epistles ore peculiar in the use of the word "devil." Elsewhere St. Paul
uses " Satan," except in Eph. iv. 27 ; vi. 11. It is impossible to say whether " the devil's
judgment " means " that which he has incurred " or " that which he inflicts."
5
ui. 1-7.
s "
iii. 8 10. Besides the Seven," deacons properly so called may be referred to in
1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Rom. xii. 7 ; 1 Pet. iv. 11 ; as well as in Phil. i. 1.
4 rw Ocufaiov.
7
Taxiov an untranslatable ellipse. John xiii. 27 ; Heb. xiii. 23.
8
Apart from the awkwardness of the Church being, in the same verse, the house of
God and also a pillar and base of the truth, the expression is one of the most difficult and
surprising one of the least obviously Pauline in the whole Epistle. The separate
metaphors occur in Gal. ii. 9 and Eph. ii. 20, but only of persons. There is, therefore,
much to be said for attaching them to avaorpe^co&u, and making them apply to Timothy,
as I have done. (See Dean Stanley, Sermons on the Apostolic Age, p. 115.) The words
are applied to the martyr Attalus in the Epistle of the Church of Lyons, c. 5. Others
attach them to the next sentence which they would turn into a most awkward and
unnatural anti-climax. If, however, they are applied to the Church, the meaning is
clear enough namely, that apart from the Church the truth of the Gospel would be
without that earthly institution on which, by Christ's ordinance, its stability and permanence
depends.
9
"O? is read by N, A, 0, F, G. (The wading of A was once supposed to be ec, but
Bishop Ellicott testifies that the apparent line across the O was originally due to the
tagitta of the < in the word tvvepsiav on the other side of the page. See his Pastoral
Epistles, p. 103.) Besides this, it ii ao unquestionably supported by every canon of
criticism that it may now be regarded a a certain reading.
10
iiL 14 16. These last phrases are so rhythmic in their introverted parallelism
with the varied order of then- triple antitheses, that they have, with much probability,
been supposed (like Eph. v. 14) to belong to some ancient hymn or creed. Tke extreme
fcntiquity of Christian hymns is proved by Eph. v. "
19, and by Plin. Epp. x. 97. Juste-