Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Argument
The argument of this Epistle is generally the same as that of the previous one. For he exhorts Timothy, teaching what are the duties of a Pastor and Bishop; and that the first is to evangelize fearlessly and urgently, and from sacred Scripture to teach sound doctrine, to exhort, rebuke sinners, and confute heretics, whose morals he depicts to the life. He gives the foundation and two seals of Predestination, namely the foreknowledge of God and the flight from sin. He stirs up to fortitude, patience, study of sacred Scripture, and martyrdom, and signifies that this latter is at hand for himself. Whence St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret, Anselm, and others think that Paul, sighing for Christ and with his soul now nearly expiring, sent forth this last Epistle as a kind of swan-song, when he was at Rome in his second imprisonment and was nearest to death (as is gathered from chapter IV, verse 6), which occurred in the year of Christ 69, which was the 13th of Nero; although Baronius from chapter IV, 17 and 18, thinks that this Epistle was written from his first imprisonment, in the year of Christ 59, on which there will be more in chapter IV.