Timothy

" And, writing to Timothy, he declares:

"This charge I commit to you, child Timothy, according to the prophecies that went before upon you, that you may war in them the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some, having thrust away, have made shipwreck concerning the faith," because they defiled with unbelief the conscience that came from God.

"O Timothy, keep the deposit, turning away from the profane empty talkings and oppositions of the falsely-named knowledge, which some, professing, have missed the mark concerning the faith.

Let us see, then, what is written to Timothy by Paul:

For since the word 'knowledge' extends widely, and a thing is known in one way according to number, in another according to magnitude, in another according to power, in another according to its manner of existing, in another according to the time of its coming to be, in another according to substance—these men, taking up the whole in a single question, if they catch us confessing that we know, dem …

" By this, for the present, you have first commended your own self, keeping exactly what Paul handed down to Timothy — for it is plain that you give heed to reading;

and so the reason holds for his circumcising Timothy and bringing in shaven men into the temple, which things are told in the Acts — so true that they agree with the apostle when he professes that he was made a Jew to the Jews, that he might gain the Jews, and lived under the law for the sake of those who were under the law, and so too for the sake of those surreptitiously introduced, and at last …

Yet I wonder that, when he received letters written to one man, he rejected the two to Timothy and the one to Titus, composed about ecclesiastical order.

Plainly the same Apostle handed over Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan, that they might be amended not to blaspheme, as he writes to his own Timothy.

Likewise to Timothy:

He circumcised Timothy alone, and yet abolished circumcision.

There is another instance too in the conduct of Paul, who circumcised Timothy, though he knew the Jews would conclude from thence, that the ordinance of circumcision, which in reality had been abolished, was still binding upon the descendants of Israel, and that Paul and Timothy were of the same opinion.

Is not Paul said to have circumcised Timothy for the sake of a better dispensation?

But concerning the Father, to Timothy:

" Unto which day and time he commands him too to keep the commandment immaculate, irreproachable, "unto the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, which in His own times He shall show, the blessed and only potentate, and King of kings, and Lord of lords" — speaking of God.

for, advising him to use a little wine on account of his stomach and his frequent infirmities, from which Timothy abstained not by institution but by devotion (though custom would rather have profited his stomach), by this very thing the Apostle commended abstinence from wine as worthy of God, which he dissuaded only out of necessity.

But writing to Timothy too, he wishes the younger women to marry, to bear children, to act as mothers of families.

Now if the apostle had also absolutely permitted one whose marriage was lost in the faith to marry, he would have done so just as he did the other things which, against the form of his own rule, he carried out for the condition of the times—circumcising Timothy on account of the false brethren superintroduced, and bringing certain shaven men into the temple on account of the observance of the Jews …

"O Timothy, guard the deposit," and again, "Keep the good deposit.

So, according to times and persons and causes, they rebuked certain things into which they themselves likewise, according to times and persons and causes, fell — just as if Peter too had rebuked Paul because, while forbidding circumcision, he himself circumcised Timothy.