John Wesley (NT Notes)

“An apostle of Jesus Christ - According to the knowledge of the truth. We serve God according to the measure of our faith: we fulfil our public office according to the measure of our knowledge. The truth that is after godliness - Which in every point runs paral…”

“What creature dares ask, "Why no sooner?" Manifested his word - Containing that promise, and the whole "truth which is after godliness." Through the preaching wherewith I am intrusted according to the commandment of God our saviour - And who dares exercise thi…”

“My own son - Begot in the same image of God, and repaying a paternal with a filial affection. The common faith - Common to me and all my spiritual children.”

“Ordain elders - Appoint the most faithful, zealous men to watch over the rest. Their character follows, Tit i, 6-9. These were the elders, or bishops, that Paul approved of;-men that had living faith, a pure conscience, a blameless life.”

“But to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure - The apostle joins defiled and unbelieving, to intimate that nothing can be clean without a true faith: for both the understanding and conscience, those leading powers of the soul, are polluted; consequently,…”

“As becometh holiness - Literally, observing an holy decorum. Not slanderers - Or evil-speakers. Not given to much wine - If they use a little for their often infirmities.”

“That they instruct the young women - These Timothy was to instruct himself; Titus, by the elder women. To love their husbands, their children - With a tender, temperate, holy, wise affection.”

“Keepers at home - Whenever they are not called out by works of necessity, piety, and mercy. Good - Well tempered, sweet, soft, obliging. Obedient to their husbands - Whose will, in all things lawful, is a rule to the wife.”

“Showing thyself a pattern - Titus himself was then young. In the doctrine which thou teachest in public: as to matter, uncorruptness; as to the manner of delivering it, seriousness - Weightiness, solemnity.”

“Please them in all things - Wherein it can be done without sin. Not answering again - Though blamed unjustly. This honest servants are most apt to do.”

“Showing all good fidelity - Soft, obliging faithfulness That they may adorn the doctrine of God our saviour - More than St. Paul says of kings. How he raises the lowness of his subject!”

“And worldly desires - Which are opposite to sobriety and righteousness. We should live soberly - In all purity and holiness. Sobriety, in the scripture sense, is rather the whole temper of a man, than a single virtue in him.”

“Looking - With eager desire. For that glorious appearing - Which we hope for. Of the great God, even our saviour Jesus Christ - So that, if there be (according to the Arian scheme) a great God and a little God, Christ is not the little God, but the great one.”

“Who gave himself for us - To die in our stead. That he might redeem us - Miserable bondslaves, as well from the power and the very being, as from the guilt, of all our sins.”

“For we - And as God hath dealt with us, so ought we to deal with our neighbour. Were without understanding - Wholly ignorant of God. And disobedient - When he was declared to us.”

“The cause of it; not our works or righteousness, but "the kindness and love of God our saviour." 2. The effects; which are, (1.) Justification; "being justified," pardoned and accepted through the alone merits of Christ, not from any desert in us, but accord…”

“He desires that all believers should be careful - Have their thoughts upon them: use their best contrivance, their utmost endeavours, not barely to practice, but to excel, to be eminent and distinguished in them: because, though they are not the ground of our …”

“This is the only place, in the whole scripture, where this word heretic occurs; and here it evidently means, a man that obstinately persists in contending about "foolish questions," and thereby occasions strife and animosities, schisms and parties in the churc…”

“Come to me to Nicopolis - Very probably not the Nicopolis in Macedonia, as the vulgar subscription asserts: (indeed, none of those subscriptions at the end of St. Paul's epistles are of any authority:) rather it was a town of the same name which lay upon the s…”