Note 46 — II. THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH.

I. Tim. iii. 2, 11, 12—Tit. i. 6.—Origenis Comment. in Matt. XIV. 23. The polygamy practised by the Jews from the earliest times was continued after the Dispersion. Justin Martyr taxes them with it (Dial. cum Tryphone), and Theodosius, in 393 endeavored to suppress it (Const. 7 Cod. Lib. II. Tit. ix.) by a law, the preservation of which by Justinian, after an interval of nearly a century and a half, shows that the necessity for the prohibition still existed. Even among some of the eastern Christians the precept was required, if we may believe some ancient Arabic canons, which pass under the name of the Council of Nicæa (Decret. ex quatuor Regum libris can. v. ap. Harduin. Concil. I. 511).

This explanation of St. Paul’s injunction is adopted by Theophylact (Comment. in I. Epist. ad Timoth.) and is expressed in the paraphrase “non plures habens uxores quam unam,” in a tract of uncertain date, attributed to St. Cyprian or St. Augustin (De XII. Abusionibus Seculæ cap. x. ap. Opp. S. Cypriani Mantissa p. 49, Oxon. 1682). This is likewise the view put forward by the Church of Geneva in 1563 when replying to certain queries of the Huguenot Synod of Lyons (Cap. XXI. Art. x. ap. Quick, Synodicon in Gall. Reform. I. 49). Origen’s discussion of the matter (Comment. in Matt. XIV. 23-4) shows how doubtful he considered it.

In fact, if the text is to be construed with rigorous exactness, it would exclude all unmarried men from the episcopate, and this seems to be the sense attributed to it in the Apostolic Constitutions (Lib. II. c. ii.), which in commenting upon it do not appear to contemplate bachelors as eligible.