1 Timothy 6:19

Laying up in store] see Matthew 6:19; Luke 16:9. Eternal life] RV 'life indeed,' following a reading which, has slightly the better authority of the two.

20-22. Final and impassioned appeal to Timothy. The faith is a 'deposit' (RV) which St. Paul has committed to Timothy (2 Timothy 1:13), and which it is his office, as it is now the office of the Church, to keep safe and uncorrupted for the salvation of the world in spite of gnostic or agnostic speculations and theories. 'Who at this day,' says Vincentius Lerinensis, 'is Timothy but either generally the whole Church, or especially the whole body of prelates, who ought either themselves to have a sound knowledge of divine religion, or to infuse it into others? What is meant by keeping the depositum? Keep it, quoth he, for fear of thieves, for danger of enemies, lest when men be asleep they oversow cockle among that good seed of wheat which the Son of man hath sowed in His field. Keep, quoth he, the depositum. What is meant by this depositum? It is that which is committed to them, not that which is invented by thee; that which thou hast received, not that which thou hast devised; a thing not of wit, but of learning; not of private assumption, but of public tradition; a thing brought to thee, not brought forth of thee; wherein thou must not be an author, but a keeper; not a founder, but an observer; not a leader, but a follower. Keep the depositum, quoth he; preserve the talent of the Catholic Faith safe and undiminished; that which is committed to thee, let that remain with thee, and that deliver. Thou hast received gold, render thou gold; I will not have one thing for another. O Timothy, O Priest, O Teacher, O Doctor, if God's gift hath made thee meet and sufficient, for thy wit, exercise, and learning.. let them that come after you rejoice at arriving at the understanding of that, by thy means, which antiquity, without that understanding, had in veneration. Yet for all this, in such sort deliver the same things which thou hast learnt, that albeit thou teachest after a new manner, yet thou never teach new things' (c. 22). No one has better grasped and expressed the underlying thought and purpose of St. Paul's appeal to Timothy than Vincentius.