Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/305

 J.—I do not see why he should; but I should like to know whether there is proof from Scripture that he did not.

Dr.—When St. Paul was just going to be put to death for the sake of the Gospel, he writes thus to Timothy: "Preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine……Watch thou in all things, endure affliction, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course." (2 Tim. iv. 2–7.)

J.—From these words it is certainly clear that St. Paul intended Timothy, whom he had appointed to act as his brother and fellow-labourer while he lived, to act as his successor when he should be no more.

Dr.—And all true Christians, who had reverenced Timothy as if really St. Paul, when that Apostle was removed from them for a time by distance, would no less reverence him as such, when the Apostle was removed once for all by death.

J.—They could do no less.

Dr.—It follows then, that even when the Apostles had all entered into their rest, i. e. in the second age of the Gospel, we might still have used the test I have given, to distinguish the Church of from sects falsely claiming that name. We should have found the one set of Christians reverently sitting at the feet of the successors of the Apostles; all the others so-called, openly rejecting their rightful authority.

J.—It is true; ever while these successors of the Apostles lived, all who professed to obey, were bound to pay them, and would have paid them, a reverence which the false sects would not have paid; so that in those times there would certainly have been no difficulty in finding which was the Church, which it was our duty to join.

Dr.—And when Timothy, Titus, or Epaphroditus, as exercising the same full authority which had been exercised by St. Paul, themselves appointed fellow-labourers and successors, committing, as the Apostle had enjoined one of them to do, the things which they had heard to faithful men who might be able to teach others also; (2 Tim. ii. 2.) would not these faithful men be reverenced