Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/341



But no such idle arrangements of mere etiquette were ever suffered to mar the noble and useful simplicity of the primitive church government, in the least. The presence of an apostle in the same town with a bishop, could no more interfere with the regular function of the latter, than the presence of a diocesan bishop in any city of his diocese, excludes the rector of the church there, from his pastoral charge. The sacred duties of Timothy were those of the pastoral care of a single church,—a sort of charge that no apostle ever assumed out of Jerusalem; but John's apostolic duties led him to exercise a general supervision over a great number of churches. All those in Little Asia would claim his care alike, and the most distant would look to him for counsel; while that in Ephesus, having been so well established by Paul, and being blessed by the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for that very place and duty, by him, would really stand in very little need of any direct attention from John. Yet among his Jewish brethren he would still find much occasion for his missionary labor, even in that city; and this was the sort of duty which was most appropriate to his apostolic character; for the apostles were missionaries and not bishops.
 * non to be sure, and never is hoisted again till the greater officer is off beyond the horizon.

Others pretend to say, however, that Timothy was dead when John arrived, and that John succeeded him in the bishopric,—a mere invention to get rid of the difficulty, and proved to be such by the assertion that the apostle was a bishop, and rendered suspicious also by the circumstance of Timothy being so young a man.

The fable of the Virgin Mary's journey, in company with John, to Ephesus, has been very gravely supported by Baronius, (Ann. 44, § 29,) who makes it happen in the second year of the reign of Claudius, and quotes as his authority a groundless statement, drawn from a mis-translation of a synodical epistle from the council of Ephesus to the clergy at Constantinople, containing a spurious passage which alludes to this story, condemning the Nestorians as heretics, for rejecting the tale. There are, and have long been, however, a vast number of truly discreet and learned Romanists, who have scorned to receive such contemptible and useless inventions. Among these, the learned Antony Pagus, in his Historico-Chronological Review of Baronius, has utterly refuted the whole story, showing the spurious character of the passage quoted in its support. (Pag. Crit. Baron. An. 42. § 3.) Lampe quotes moreover, the Abbot Facditius, the Trevoltian collectors and Combefisius, as also refuting the fable. Among the Protestant critics, Rivetus and Basnage have discussed the same point.

Of the incidents of John's life at Ephesus, no well authorized account whatever can be given. Yet on this part of apostolic history the Fathers are uncommonly rich in details, which are interesting, and some of which present no improbability on examination; but their worst character is, that they do not make their appearance until above one hundred years after the date of the incidents which they commemorate, and refer to no authority but loose and floating tradition. In respect to these, too, occurs exactly the same difficulty which has already been specified in connection with the traditionary history of Peter,—that the same early writers, who record as true these stories which are so probable and reasonable in their character, also present in the same grave manner other stories, which do bear, with them, on their very faces, the evidence of their utter falsehood, in their palpable and monstrous absurdity. Among the possible and probable incidents of John's life, narrated by the Fathers, are a journey to Jerusalem, and one also to Rome,—but of these there is no certainty, nor any acceptable evidence. These long journeys, too, are