cation. As if he had said, “It is not I that charge thee, but He who chose thee,” and this is meant by “the prophecies that went before on thee.” Listen to them, obey them. And say; what chargest thou? “That by them thou shouldest war a good warfare.” They chose thee, that then for which they chose thee do thou, “war a good warfare.” He named “a good warfare,” since there is a bad warfare, of which he says, “As ye have yielded your members instruments1149 to uncleanness and to iniquity.” (Rom. vi. 19.) Those men serve under a tyrant, but thou servest under a King. And why calls he it a warfare? To show how mighty a contest is to be maintained by all, but especially by a Teacher; that we require strong arms, and sobriety, and awakenedness, and continual vigilance: that we must prepare ourselves for blood and conflicts, must be in battle array, and have nothing relaxed. “That thou shouldest war in them,” he says. For as in an army all do not serve in the same capacity, but in their different stations; so also in the Church one has the office of a Teacher, another that of a disciple, another that of a private man. But thou art in this. And, because this is not sufficient he adds, Ver. 19. “Holding faith, and a good conscience.” For he that would be a Teacher must first teach himself. For as he who has not first been a good soldier, will never be a general, so it is with the Teacher; wherefore he says elsewhere, “Lest when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away.” (1 Cor. ix. 27.) “Holding faith,” he says, “and a good conscience,” that so thou mayest preside over others. When we hear this, let us not disdain the exhortations of our superiors, though we be Teachers. For if Timothy, to whom all of us together are not worthy to be compared, receives commands and is instructed, and that being himself in the Teacher’s office, much more should we. “Which some having put away, have made shipwreck concerning the faith.”1150 And this follows naturally. For when the life is corrupt, it engenders a doctrine congenial to it, and from this circumstance many are seen to fall into a gulf of evil, and to turn aside into Heathenism. For that they may not be tormented with the fear of futurity, they endeavor to persuade their souls, that what we preach is false. And some turn aside from the faith, who seek out everything by reasoning; for reasoning produces shipwreck, while faith is as a safe ship. They then who turn aside from the faith must suffer shipwreck; and this he shows by an example. Ver. 20. “Of whom are Hymenæus and Alexander.” And from them he would instruct us. You see how even from those times there have been seducing Teachers, curious enquirers, and men holding off from the faith, and searching out1151 by their own reasonings. As the shipwrecked man is naked and destitute 1149 The word used, Rom. vi. 13, which may mean “arms” (ὅπλα). 1150 [This is the order of the R.V.] 1151 al. “searching into divine Mysteries by.” 732 1 Timothy 1:18,19