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has the same meaning throughout this chapter. When in the first part of it St. Paul says
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Rebuke not an elder, but exhort him as a father, it is quite clear that he is speaking simply of elderly men, and not of persons holding the office of an elder: for he goes on at once to speak of the treatment of younger men, and also of older and younger women. But when in the second half of the chapter he says
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Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, and
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Against an elder receive not an accusation, except at the mouth of two or three witnesses, it is equally clear that he is speaking of official persons, and not merely of persons who are advanced in years. The way in which the thoughts suggested one another throughout this portion of the letter is not difficult to trace.
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Let no man despise thy youth suggested advice as to how the young overseer was to behave towards young and old of both sexes. This led to the treatment of widows, and this again to the manner of appointing official widows. Women holding an official position suggests the subject of men holding an official position in the Church. If the treatment of the one class needs wisdom and circumspection, not less does the treatment of the other. And therefore, with even more solemnity than in the previous section about the widows, the Apostle gives his directions on this important subject also.
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I charge thee in the sight of God, and Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing by partiality.
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Lay hands hastily on no man do refer to the ordination of the official elders or presbyters. It is urged that the preceding warnings about the treatment of charges made against presbyters, and of persons who are guilty of habitual sin, point to _disciplinary_ functions of some kind rather than to ordination. Accordingly some few commentators in modern times have treated the passage as referring to _the laying on of hands at the readmission of penitents to communion_. But of any such custom in the Apostolic age there is no trace. There is nothing improbable in the hypothesis, imposition of hands being a common symbolical act. But it is a mere hypothesis unsupported by evidence. Eusebius, in speaking of the controversy between Stephen of Rome and Cyprian of Carthage about the re-baptizing of heretics, tells us that the admission of heretics to the Church by imposition of hands with prayer, but without second baptism, was the
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But the admission of heretics is not quite the same as the readmission of penitents: and a custom might be