{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-1647","native_reference":{"book_number":610,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":10,"verse_to":10},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: But none could rightly be ordained a minister in the Church if the apostle had said, \"If any is without sin,\" where he says, \"If any is without crime;\" or if he had said, \"Having no sin,\" where he says, \"Having no crime.\" Because many baptized believers are without crime, but I should say that no one in this life is without sin,—however much the Pelagians are inflated, and burst asunder in madness against me because I say this: not because there remains anything of sin which is not remitted in baptism; but because by us who remain in the weakness of this life such sins do not cease daily to be committed, as are daily remitted to those who pray in faith and work in mercy. This is the soundness of the catholic faith, which the Holy Spirit everywhere sows,—not the vanity and presumption of spirit of heretical pravity.<br/><i>— AGAINST TWO LETTERS OF THE PELAGIANS 1.14.28</i></p><p><b>Gregory the Dialogist</b>: For, since it is written, \"That one should first be proved, and so minister\" (1 Tim. iii. 10), much more ought he first to be proved who is taken as an intercessor for the people, lest bad priests should become the cause of the people's ruin. There can therefore be no excuse, no defence against this, since it is clearly known to all how solicitous about diligent attention to this matter is the holy and excellent teacher, who forbids that a novice should accede to sacred orders (1 Tim. iii.). But, as then one was called a novice who had been newly planted in the conversation of the holy faith, so one is now to be held to be a novice who, having been suddenly planted in the habit of religion, creeps on to canvass for sacred dignities. Orders, then, should be risen to in an orderly way: for he courts a fall who seeks to rise to the topmost heights of a place by steep ascents, disregarding the steps that lead to it. And, seeing that the same apostle teaches his disciple, among other directions with regard to sacred orders, that hands are to be laid hastily on no man (1 Tim. v.), what can be more hasty or what more headlong than to begin at the top, and that a man should commence by being a bishop before he has been a minister?<br/><i>— Register of Epistles, Book 9, Epistle 106</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: And here he requires, though in other words, that he be \"not a novice,\" where he says, \"Let these also first be proved,\" where the conjunction \"also\" is added, as connecting this with what had been said before of Bishops, for nothing intervenes between. And there is the same reason for the \"not a novice\" in that case. For would it not be absurd, that when a newly purchased slave is not entrusted with anything in a house, till he has by long trial given proofs of his character, yet that one should enter into the Church of God from a state of heathenism, and be at once placed in a station of preeminence?<br/><i>— Homily on 1 Timothy 11</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: And let these also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons, being blameless.</p><p>And let these also first be tested. Just as, Paul says, the bishops, so that they may not be beginners.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON 1 TIMOTHY</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"5f0c39f4f147634057a317a8392eed814363400a1ad66bacec8934baac209cb3","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":1647,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"352132951eb7f83b0d40685c850984caa9fe530f1fd38944fdc1cba864ba67c9","translator":null,"work":null}