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It is one thing to speak sound doctrine, something else to teach what agrees with sound doctrine. For the former consists merely in simple instruction, the latter takes place when together with what you teach there is also improvement of life. “For he who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men thus shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” The Savior commands his disciples not only to labor at meditating on the Scriptures, to reflect upon the things that are written, and to store them up in the treasury of their memory; but first they are to do what has been commanded. “But whosoever does and teaches, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” For unless our justice surpasses the justice of the Scribes and Pharisees, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. They are those who, although they sit upon Moses’ seat, they say and do not do, and they bind burdens that cannot be carried, which they place on men’s necks, and they themselves are unwilling to touch with the least finger. This then the apostle now teaches Titus his son in Christ and his own disciple that he should speak what agrees with sound doctrine. For at that time when the teacher’s doctrine is equally in agreement with his life, there is soundness of doctrine.

Previously he instructed Titus in a general way in what he ought to speak to everyone, in that he says, “But you, speak what befits sound doctrine.” Now, he explains what befits each age by specific cases. First he deals with the things that befit the older men, then what befits older women, third what things are suitable for the young, both males and females. Although in the instruction of the older women he has laid down commands concerning young women, it is not so much that he himself was teaching the young women as explaining what they should be taught by the older ones. The final precepts he has befittingly laid down concern slaves and specific ages and conditions, so that his words are a rule of life and character.
So then, older men are to be “sober” or vigilant, since νηφαλίοι among the Greeks expresses both. They are to be “honest,” so that the dignity of their character may adorn the dignity of their age; “chaste,” lest they should practice the excess that belongs to another period of life, lest they whose blood is already cold in respect to lust should be a ruinous example to the young men. They should be “sound in faith,” of which “soundness of faith” we have spoken above. They are to be “sound,” however, not only “in faith” but also “in love” and “in pa-tience,” so that when they have the first soundness of faith, they may hear from the Savior, “Your faith has made you whole.” And elsewhere, “I have not found such great faith in Israel.”
And on account of the same “soundness of faith” they may become sons of Abraham, of whom it is written, “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for justice.” And Habakkuk mentions this soundness of faith when he says, “But the just lives from my faith.” Reread the apostle Paul’s letter to the Hebrews (or whosever you think it is, since it is now received among the ecclesiastical writings), and list off that entire catalogue of faith in which it is written, “By faith Abel offered to God a greater sacrifice than Cain”; and, “Enoch was translated so that he would not see death”; and Noah, believing God concerning those things which he could not yet see, built the ark; and Abraham went forth into a land which he did not know. And lest it seem that Scripture gives no example of faith to women, in the same letter it is written that Sarah received the power to conceive seed at a time of life when this was already out of place, since she considered him faithful who had made the promise. Isaac’s faith is praised there, and Jacob’s, Joseph’s, Moses’ too, and Ra- hab’s, and that of the rest whom the one who reads that letter can know better.
   Well then, just as there is “soundness in faith,” so there is also the same soundness “in love.” But who possesses the soundness of love if not he who loves God first with his entire soul and with his whole heart and with all his strength? Then, upon hearing Christ’s command re-specting the neighbor, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” he divides his love, since in these two commandments the entire law and prophets depend. The one who has soundness of love “is not jealous, he is not puffed up, he does not do wrong or act dishonorably, he is not incited to wrath, he does not think evil, he does not rejoice over injustice, but he rejoices together in the truth; he endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things, expects all things.” And because love never falls away, the one who is in soundness of love also himself never falls. For indeed, “neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor hunger, nor persecution, nor nakedness, nor danger, nor sword will be able to separate him” from the soundness of love, which he has in Christ Jesus.Why should I speak about the sword and other lesser things that are not able to divide him who possesses the soundness of love, when neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things coming nor strength nor height nor depth nor any other created thing can separate him who has the soundness of love in Christ Jesus?

If we have understood the soundness of love, let us take an example from the Scriptures of those who are in the weakness of love. The Savior says concerning the last times, “For when iniquity is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold.” Now love is hot among those who are fervent in spirit; but it is cold and icy and chilly in those who have endured the very severe winds of the North. “For from the North evils will flare up against all the inhabitants of the earth.” And it was from this coldness of love that Ammon grew cold in respect to his sister Tamar. Therefore, one should be afraid lest perhaps even we should one day be overcome by the weakness of love. For sometimes it comes to pass that at first our love toward a virgin or toward some woman is holy; and when the mind softens in affection, gradually out of weakness the soundness of love fades and begins to grow weak, and it carries off the one in love to final death.
This is also why the apostle cautiously and prudently instructs Timothy that he should exhort young women in “all chastity.” Now “all chastity” is in flesh, spirit, and soul. Let not the eye stumble; let us not be ensnared by the beauty of a woman’s face; let it not entice us to hear flattering words; let not our previously hardened mind begin to wither at single words. Let them beware, then, as we have said, both young men and old, both young women and old, and let them guard their hearts with all diligence, lest through the soundness of love, the illness of love may sneak in and through holy love it may become unholy love that drags them down to Gehenna.
Let the one who is sound in faith, who is sound in love, be sound in patience too. And patience, which is especially tested in temptations, because it is of no benefit to have possessed what we listed above unless all the wealth and merchandise with which the ship is loaded down is preserved through the storm, and with the winds blowing here and there, the things that have been well distributed should be delivered without a shipwreck. “For he who perseveres to the end will be saved.”

Старицы также - то есть, подобно старцам, во всем достойные, трезвые, скромные, степенные, здравые в вере, и любви, и терпении, соответствующее их полу имели бы подражание святым, или, лучше, как написано по-гречески: en katasthmati ieroprepeij¹, чтобы также сами их походка и движение, и лицо, и слово, и молчание, и что угодно - являли достоинство святого облачения.

Even if the apostle Peter commands that husbands should honor their wives as the weaker vessel, one should not think, however, that the wife, who may have the weaker bodily vessel is at once also weaker in soul. This is why it is now commanded to them that in them too the apostle’s words are fulfilled: “Power is perfected in weakness.” And it is said that they should have everything that the older men have been commanded to know commonly, namely, in that passage where he says, “Likewise bid the older women,” that is, just as the older men, “in everything to be sober, honest, chaste, sound in faith, love, and patience.” And they should have this unique thing in view of their sex, to be “of holy disposition,” or as it reads better in Greek, ἐν κατα­στήματι ἱεροπρεπεῖς, so that their very gait and movements, countenance, speech, silence, should present a certain dignity of holy elegance.
And because this kind of young women is accustomed to be garrulous, in accordance with this he says, “Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, but not only idlers but also lo-quacious meddlers, speaking what is not fitting.” Therefore, he does not want them to be slanderers, that is, accusers. They should not be the type to detract from some in order to please others. Or, at least, because they themselves have already passed beyond adolescence, they would discuss with the ages of the younger women and would say, “She is adorned thus, she wears her hair thus, she proceeds thus, she loves him, she is loved by him.” Even if these things are true, she should not so much accuse others as correct herself secretly by the love of Christ, and let her not prefer to teach in order to avoid doing, to accuse her in public of what she herself has done.
These periods of life are accustomed to devote themselves to wine for the sake of lust, because they have grown cold from bodily excess (although there are very many who are not ashamed of their own flesh and, being timid young virgins, they are composed as they come before the flock of playboys). And when in the midst of their cups they seem wise and eloquent in their own eyes, they assume as it were an austerity of manners, speaking what seems good to themselves, and not remembering what they were. And therefore let the older woman be forbidden to drink wine excessively, since that which leads to lust in young men leads to drunkenness in the old. Or how can an older woman teach younger women chastity seeing that, if the young woman imitates the drunkenness of the older woman, she cannot be chaste?
It is significant, however, that he has expressed, “Not enslaved to much wine.” For enslavement is a kind of extreme condition. The senses of a man occupied with wine are not his own but the wine’s. Since therefore he has first taught what sort the older women ought to be, and after these things what things they have in common with the older men, he has likewise explained their own unique characteristics, that they should be filled with an honest and holy disposition and with all decorum; they should not be accusers or detractors of others, they should not have their senses occupied with wine. Now, consequently, he permits them to have the bridles of doctrine, so that when they become such, they may have the freedom to teach, namely, to teach what are good things. For although in another passage he said, “But I do not permit women to teach,” it should be understood thus, that lofty teaching should be for their husbands.
However that may be, let them teach the younger women, as if they were their own daughters, first of all, “chastity,” since the adversary fights against this all the more in the one blooming with youth;

 

However that may be, let them teach the younger women, as if they were their own daughters, first of all, “chastity,” since the adversary fights against this all the more in the one blooming with youth;
and all his power against women is in the navel of the belly. Then, they are to love their husbands and esteem their children. What is the teaching to love husbands? When it is constituted not in the eloquence of the one teaching but in the heart of the one who loves. 

He wants them to love their husbands “chastely”; he wants there to be chaste esteem between a husband and wife, so that with shame and modesty, and, as it were, by the necessity of sex, she should render what is owed to the husband rather than that she herself demands it from him.And let her believe that they are doing the works that lead to the birth of children before the eyes of God and of the angels, so that she will not be ashamed even of the secret bedroom, and of the darkness of night, and of her own enclosed room, since she reflects on the fact that everything lies open to the eyes of God.
Now they love their children in this way, if they educate them in the instruction of God. But to be unwilling to cause them grief by teaching what is good, and to give them license to sin, this is not to love the children but to hate them. Let the younger women be instructed too to keep house carefully. And since it could come to pass that care for the house will be thrown off by austerity, and through this command of the apostle, the mother would become more severe toward the young slaves, therefore he has linked the word “kind” so that she believes she rules the husband’s house well when she has commanded the young slaves with “kindness,” not terror. And besides, “submissive to their husbands,” lest perhaps they do not remember the riches and nobility of God’s pronouncement that has been wafted in, through which they have been subjected to their husbands. For he says to the woman, “Your turning (conversio) will be toward your husband; and he will rule over you.”
One should take consideration of the prudence of holy Scripture in this. For the Lord did not speak this to the man and say, “You will rule your wife”; but to the woman herself, that he would leave to her a reward for obedience while she is under his authority, if she wills to obey God’s commands, serve the man, and be subject to the husband. Thus in a manner she would be free of servitude and full of love, therefore she serves her husband while she fears offending him. For indeed “the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the sake of the man.” And since the man is the head of the woman, but Christ is the head of the man, any wife who is not subject to her husband, that is, to her head, is guilty of the same sin of which the husband is guilty too, if he is not subject to Christ his head.
Now the word of the Lord is “blasphemed,” either while God’s initial pronouncement is despised and regarded as nothing; or when the gospel of Christ is defamed while, contrary to the law and faith of nature, she who is Christian and subjected by God’s law, desires to command the husband, when even pagan women serve their husbands by the common law of nature.

 

Just as in respect to what he had commanded above, saying, “Likewise bid the older women to be of holy disposition,” we had mentioned that the comparison of the older women was to be related to the older men, so now in respect to what he has added, “Urge the younger men likewise to be chaste,” we think that the comparison of younger men should be applied to the older women and through the older women to the older men. Thus they should have the sobriety of the older men, and they should be honest and chaste and sound in faith, love, and patience. Now in respect to the sanctity of the disposition of the older women, they are not to be accusers, enslaved to much wine, but they should teach well, and so on. But he has recorded uniquely of the younger men that they are to be chaste “in all things,” namely, both in mind and in body, both in deeds and in thoughts, so that there is no suspicion of baseness in the young man. And although certain of the Latins think that this should be read thus, “Urge the young men likewise to be chaste,” and after this they add, “offering yourself as a model of good works in all things”; nevertheless we should know that “in all things” is to be referred to what comes above it, that is, “urge them to be chaste in all things.”

One should also know that continence is necessary not only in re-spect to deeds of the flesh and desires of the mind but in all affairs. Let us not seek honors we do not deserve. Let us not be set on fire by greed; let us not be overcome by any passion. He says, “offering yourself as a model of good works.” It is not profitable for someone to be trained in teaching, and to have sharpened his tongue for orating unless he teaches more by example than by words. After all, one who is unchaste, even if he is eloquent, if he exhorts his audience to chastity, his speech is infirm and he has no authority to exhort. And on the other hand, though someone may be a rustic and slow of speech, if he is chaste, he can incite men by his example to imitate his life.
Now as for what he says, “in incorruption,” it should be understood as follows: “incorruption” expresses virginity proper. After all, even in public those who are virgins are called the incorrupt; and those who have ceased being virgins are named the corrupt. And we say, she who was once a virgin is corrupt. This is why I think that even Titus, before he was involved with the deeds of the flesh believed in the gospel and received baptism; and he remained a virgin, and now is advised by the apostle to offer himself as a model in respect to incorruption. Now we do not see this incorruption in Timothy. For when he said to him, “Let no one despise your youth, but be a model for the believers in speech, in way of life, in love, faith, and chastity,” he was silent about “incorruption” and recorded only “chastity.”
Now chastity can be understood also of celibacy without virginity. Unless perhaps we take chastity in respect to the mind, but incorruption in respect to the body, in accordance with what is written elsewhere as a definition of a virgin: “so that she may be holy in body and spirit.” And he himself now added in what follows: “in doctrine, in incorruption, in chastity.” We could interpret even chastity as incorruption likewise in respect to the integrity of doctrine, except that what uniquely follows, “in sound and irreproachable speech,” contains its own command for the instruction of doctrine. Now as for his words, “in irreproachable speech,” it is not that anyone is of such great eloquence and prudence that no one reproaches him (for even the apostles and evangelists are reproached by heretics and pagans), but that he should neither say nor do anything worthy of being reproached, even though there are adversaries prepared to reproach.

 

And since there are “many who are insubordinate, vain talkers, and deceivers of minds,” who “hate him who reproved in the gate and abhorred holy speech,” therefore we should offer ourselves as an example “in all things,” in doctrine, in integrity, in chastity, in sound and irreproachable speech, so that the adversaries of life and those who are terrified by the soundness of our doctrine may not dare to accuse, that is, to fabricate anything factually true as an accusation. And indeed until today we see that there are some in the church of such great dignity and continence (although he is a rare bird) that they are even attested by their adversaries, and it is said, “That is a great man and one of holy life and with proven character, were he not a heretic.” For no one is of such limitless impudence that he could accuse sunbeams of being dark and could cover over a bright light with the darkness of night. This is why the apostle takes precautions against these very things and says, “that I might remove the occasion from whose who want an occasion.”
Now it is possible to interpret “the one who is opposed” as the devil, because he is the accuser of our brethren, as John the evangelist asserts. Since he has nothing evil to raise as an objection against us, he is ashamed and the incriminator will not be able to incriminate. Now “devil” expresses “incriminator” in the Latin language.

 

 

Since our Lord and Savior, who in the gospel says, “Come to me, you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,” thinks that no condition, age, or sex is unsuitable for blessedness, therefore the apostle now lays down commands even for slaves, namely, as for a part of the church and for members of the body of Christ. And just as higher up he showed Titus what he needed to teach older men, older women, younger women, and younger men, so now he lays down precepts that are suitable for slaves.
First of all, that “they should be submissive to their masters in all things.” Now in these “all things” that are not contrary to God, the slave should be subjected to the master, when and if the master commands things that are not opposed to Holy Scripture. But if he commands things that are contrary, let him obey the master more in spirit than in body. Pay careful attention to how he issues commands that are congruent with the persons. “Slaves,” he says, “should be submissive to their masters in all things.” While carrying on a discussion about children in another passage, he says, “Children, obey your parents.” For it is befitting that children “obey” their parents, but slaves are to be “subjected” to the master who gives orders.
It is not that we should think that this contradicts what he says in another letter, “Wives should be subjected to your husbands,” whereas in this one he asserted that wives are subjected to their husbands, as if he has used the same word both in respect to slaves and in respect to wives. For in what way is the husband the lord of the wife? He says, “He will rule over you.” Also the Savior was subjected to his parents, but when he was still twelve years old and was no different from a slave, he was Lord of all. For he had not yet reached the perfect age of manhood, which could receive the inheritance. Moreover, elsewhere it is written of him, “For when all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to himself, that God may be all in all.” Now all things will be subjected to him when he says, “The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.” The Lord is subjected in the subjected slaves. And just as he is said to be a curse for us, though he is not a curse but a true blessing, so for us he is recorded either as subjected or not subjected, if we become either subjected or not subjected to God.
Some read this passage as follows: “Slaves should be subjected to their masters,” and after they have punctuated up to this point, they add, “Let them please them in all things”; though the order of the reading is different in Greek, that is, “Let slaves be subjected to their masters in all things”; so that it follows: εὐαρέστους εἶναι. This does not fully please us, nevertheless we can translate it to some extent as: “so that they may please themselves,” namely, lest God’s pronouncement upon their condition should seem unjust to them. But just as a poor man can be saved in accordance with his own measure; and a woman is not excluded from the kingdom of God for the weakness of her sex, and every condition can receive beatitude in accordance with its own rank; so also slaves may be pleased with themselves that they are slaves. They should not think that, because they are subjected to men, on that account they cannot serve God. On the contrary in that respect, if they become subjected in all things to their masters and please themselves in their own condition, they can please the will of God all the more. And let them pursue what the apostle commanded next, that they not be “contradicters” or “thieves.” To contradict masters is the very great vice of slaves. When the masters command anything, they mutter to themselves. And so, he warns Titus to remove this sort of passion from those who are Christian slaves by means of sound teaching. For if the slave regards it as necessary to fulfill the things the master commands, why should he not do this with good will? Why should he instead offend the master and yet do what is commanded, especially since God too was offended at the water of con- tradiction? And in another passage he speaks to the people about murmuring: “Let their murmuring cease and they will not die.”

 

After correcting “contradicting” and the other vice of slaves, Christ’s doctrine says, “Do not be thieves.” Now a thief should be judged not only in great things but in lesser matters. For it is not what is taken away by theft that is attended to, but the mind of the thief. Just as in fornication and adultery, fornication or adultery would not on that account be different, if a promiscuous girl or an adulterous woman is pretty or rich, unshapely or poor. On the contrary no matter how she is, the fornication or adultery is one. The same applies to theft. How¬ever much a slave has taken, the crime of theft is incurred. This is why in the law of Moses thieves are compelled to pay back, sometimes sevenfold, sometimes fourfold. And sometimes they are killed,sometimes the thief himself is sold for his theft. I remember recently explaining these things to you (vobis) on Leviticus. Now if this is for¬bidden in the slave, how much more in the free man, lest either a judge snatches what belongs to others, or a soldier who is scarcely contented with his wages plunders what belongs to others?
A very dignified man made a nice response when the integrity of a certain judge was being praised to him. The one who was doing the praising said about him, “He is no thief.” The man replied, “He would have made an excellent slave, if he were not a runaway. The mere suspicion of theft ought to be foreign to all free persons.” Therefore let slaves be subject to their masters in everything; let them be pleasing to their condition; let them not endure their servitude with bitterness; let them not contradict their masters; let them not steal.
And after these things let them “display good faith in all things, so that they may adorn the doctrine of our Savior and God in all things.” For if with their fleshly masters they become faithful in the least thing, greater things will begin to be entrusted to them with God. Now he “adorns the doctrine” of the Lord who does the things that are suitable to his condition. And on the other hand, he confounds it who is not subjected in all things, to whom his condition is displeasing, who as a contradicter and deceiver displays good faith in no respect. For how can he be faithful with God’s property who was not able to exhibit faithfulness to a fleshly master?

After the catalogue of doctrine for Titus, what he ought to teach older men, older women, younger women, and younger men, and lastly slaves, he now has rightly added, “For the grace of God our Savior has dawned upon all men.” For there is no difference between free and slave, Greek and barbarian, circumcised and uncircumcised, woman and man, but we are all one in Christ. We are all invited to the kingdom of God. We are all to be reconciled to our Father after stumbling, not through our merits but through the grace of the Savior. This is either because Christ himself is the grace, living and subsisting from God the Father, or because this is the grace of Christ, God and Savior. And we are saved not by our merit according to what is said in another passage, “You will save them for nothing.” This grace, then, “has dawned on all men to teach us to renounce impiety and worldly desires, to live chastely and justly and piously in this world.”

 

Now I am confident that what it means to “renounce impiety and worldly desires” can be understood from what we have explained above: “They confess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds.” Through opposites, opposites are explained. Therefore “desires” are “worldly” that are suggested by the ruler of this world.And since they are “of the world,” they pass away with the clouds of this world. But when we live in Christ “chastely” and “justly,” that is, sinning neither in body nor in mind, we should also live “piously” in this world

This piety “awaits a blessed hope and the coming of glory of the great God and of our Savior Jesus Christ.” For just as impiety dreads the advent of the great God, so piety awaits him, confident concerning its works and faith.
Where is the serpent Arius? Where is the snake Eunomius?The “great God” is called “Jesus Christ the Savior,” not the firstborn of every creature, not the Word of God and wisdom, but Jesus and Christ, which are designations of the humanity he assumed. But we do not call the one, Jesus Christ, the other, the Word, as a new heresy falsely states. But we name the very same one, both before the ages and after the ages, both before the world and after Mary, or rather from Mary, the “great God our Savior Jesus Christ,” who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity by his precious blood and to purify for himself a περιούσιον people (for this what the Greek has) and that he might make them “zealous for good works.” 

И чтобы очистить Себе народ periou sion особенный и к добрым делам ревность подать. За смыслом этого слова мне пришлось обратиться к Ветхому Завету, исходя из которого, я полагаю, апостол и выбрал его (Ср. Втор. 7:6; Втор. 14:2; Втор. 26:18) ...Оно означает нечто исключительное, выдающееся, особое...

This piety “awaits a blessed hope and the coming of glory of the great God and of our Savior Jesus Christ.” For just as impiety dreads the advent of the great God, so piety awaits him, confident concerning its works and faith.
Where is the serpent Arius? Where is the snake Eunomius?The “great God” is called “Jesus Christ the Savior,” not the firstborn of every creature, not the Word of God and wisdom, but Jesus and Christ, which are designations of the humanity he assumed. But we do not call the one, Jesus Christ, the other, the Word, as a new heresy falsely states. But we name the very same one, both before the ages and after the ages, both before the world and after Mary, or rather from Mary, the “great God our Savior Jesus Christ,” who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity by his precious blood and to purify for himself a pepiousiov people (for this what the Greek has) and that he might make them “zealous for good works.”
Though I have often pondered what the word περιούσιον means and have questioned the wise men of this world in the hope that they may have read it somewhere, I was never able to discover anyone who could explain to me what it meant. For this reason I was forced to consult the Old Testament (Instrumentum) from which I thought the apostle had taken what he had said. For since he was a Hebrew and “according to the law a Pharisee,” assuredly recorded in his epistle what he knew he had read in the Old Testament (Testamento). And so, in Deuteronomy I have found, “For you are a people holy to the your Lord, and the Lord your God is pleased with you; so that you are to be to him a pepiousiov people from all the peoples who are on the face of the earth,” and in the one-hundred-thirty-fourth Psalm, where we have, “Sing to his name, for it is sweet; for the Lord chose Jacob for himself, Israel for his possession.” In place of what we have as “for his possession,” in Greek it is recorded as elc περιουσιασμὸν . In fact Aquila and the fifth edition expressed this as εις περιούσιον But the Septuagint and Theodotion in rendering it περιουσιασμὸν made an alteration of a syllable, not of the sense. Symmachus, therefore, for what stands in Greek as pepiouaion, in Hebrew as sogolla, expressed it as ἐξαίρετόν, that is, exceptional or excellent. In another book using Latin speech this word is translated “peculiar.”
Therefore, Christ Jesus our “great God and Savior” rightly re-deemed us by his blood to make the Christian people “peculiar.” They would be able to be “peculiar” if they show themselves as “zealous for good works.” This is also why what is written according to the Latin translators in the gospel as “give us today our daily bread” reads better in Greek as “our ἐπιούσιον bread,” that is, excellent, exceptional, peculiar, namely, him who when coming down from heaven says, “I am the bread who came down from heaven.” For far be from us who are forbidden to think about tomorrow to be commanded in the Lord’s prayer to ask for that bread that after a little while must be digested and expelled into the drain. There is not much difference between ἐπιούσιον and περιούσιον; for only the preposition is changed, not the word. Some think that in the Lord’s prayer the bread was called ἐπιούσιον because it is beyond all οὐσία, that is, beyond all substances. But if this is accepted, it does not differ much from that meaning that we have explained. For whatever is exceptional and excellent is outside everything and beyond everything.

He has recorded three things: “speak, exhort, rebuke.” Now his word, “speak,” apparently refers to doctrine. But what he added, “exhort,” that is, παρα­κάλει, signifies in Greek something different than in Latin; for papaklpdic expresses more the idea of “consolation” than “exhor­tation.” This word is used above about the younger men, “Likewise console the young men to be chaste in all things.” We have com­mented on this just as it reads in Latin, as if “exhort” were written. Therefore, he consoles the hearer who says: “We plead on Christ’s be­half, be reconciled to God,” and who humbles and subjects himself, in order to “gain” the one he is consoling.

However, the third term, “rebuke,” seems to me to be the opposite of consolation. Thus whoever despises the consolation becomes worthy of a rebuke and deserves to hear, “You have forgotten the consolation which speaks to you as sons.” To Timothy too we read of another “consolation” and another “rebuke” when the apostle says, “Be ready in season and out of season, convict, rebuke, console.” And indeed there the rebuke is employed first, and afterward the severity is tem­pered by consolation. But here he wants to console the disciples first, and if they do not make progress by means of the consolation, then he wants them to be corrected, and corrected “with all authority.” For this is how I understand what is said: “Rebuke with all authority,” that the added phrase refers particularly to the rebuke; it does not apply gen­erally to the two previous terms. For it is not right to say: console “with all authority,” and speak “with all authority,” but only, “rebuke with all authority.”

 Let no one look down on you. Someone may think that the same thing is now being written to Titus that was said to Timothy: “Let no one look down on your youth.” But we think, in accordance with the difference of the Greek words, that περιφρονείτω, which is written here, means one thing, and κατα­φρονείτω, which is said to Timothy, means something else, and that the prepositions περι- or κατα- make the sense different. Now that it is not by chance and as it pleases him that the apostle Paul uses not only terms and words but even diverse prepositions, in view of the variety of causes, can be clarified from what he says, “For the woman is from the man, but the man is through the woman.” And elsewhere, “For from him and through him and in him are all things.” And moreover, there is the following, “Paul an apostle not from men, nor through a man.” And so, we think that κατα­φρονείτω pertains to contempt proper, as when someone stretched out between the torture rack and the plates shows con­tempt for the pain and fears neither the threats of the judge nor the loud buzz of approval from the people standing around. On the con­trary, for the sake of confession of martyrdom, he shows contempt for and despises all punishments.

Now on the other hand, there is also a bad kind of contempt, of which Habakkuk testifies with the Holy Spirit speaking in him, “Look, you despisers, and see marvelous things and vanish.” In accordance with what we said was written to Timothy too, “Let no one show con­tempt for your youth,” that is to say: I do not want you to show your­self to be such a person who could deservedly be shown contempt by anyone. Now pepifponpaic expresses this. Nevertheless, as the Stoics claim, who make subtle distinctions between words, one who is confi­dent in himself that he is better than someone else, “despises” the one whom he regards as inferior; and the “super-,” that is, wiser, man, thinks that the lowlier man is worthy of contempt.

One of the Greeks is mocked for being puffed up like this by the vanity of pride, and for despising heaven itself and the sun, as having said,  Ἀεροβατῶ καὶ περιφρονῶ τὸν ἥλιον, which we can say in Latin as, “I tread on air and I know that I am greater than the sun.” There­fore, περιφρόνησις, which is not written to Titus, has this sense: Let none of those who are in the churches, by your negligent behavior, live in such a way that he thinks that he is better. For what sort of edifica­tion of a disciple will there be if he understands himself to be superior to his teacher? This is why not only bishops, priests, and deacons espe­cially ought to take care to preside over all their people, to excel in their manner of life and speech, but also the lesser ranks, exorcists, lectors, sacristans, and absolutely everyone who serve the household of God. For it severely undermines the church of Christ that the laity are better than the clerics.