As I exhorted you to stay at Ephesus when I was going into Macedonia, that you might charge certain men not to teach a different doctrine,
(2) It was not that he might be the “Bishop” of Ephesus. There is no evidence that he was “ordained” there at all, as the subscription to the Second Epistle declares (see the notes on that subscription), nor were the functions which he was to perform, those of a prelatical bishop. He was not to take the charge of a “diocese,” or to ordain ministers of the “second rank,” or to administer the rite of confirmation, or to perform acts of discipline. He was left there for a purpose which is specified, and that is as far as possible from what are now regarded as the appropriate functions of a prelatical bishop. Perhaps no claim which has ever been set up has had less semblance of argument than that which asserts that Timothy was the “Bishop of Ephesus.” See this clause examined in my “Inquiry into the Organization and Government of the Apostolic Church,” pp. 84-107.