2 Peter 1:15

To have these things always in remembrance.— The things which they were to have always in remembrance, were, the necessity of experiencing and practising the graces and virtues of the Christian life, mentioned 2 Peter 1:5. &c. and that if they did so, they should have an abundant entrance into Christ's everlasting kingdom of happiness. More important truths they could not remember; these things St. Peter had preached during his life; and he wrote these two epistles, that the Christians might remember them when he was dead. He thought writing much preferable to oral tradition, for preserving the exact knowledge and remembrance of truths of the last consequence:—and he judged well; for what have we certain from oral tradition? whereas these two epistles of St. Peter's have already continued above 1700 years, and are as able to put us in remembrance of these things, as they were the Christians at that age when they were written, and of all ages since. The note of the Rhemish annotators upon this verse is most curious; for they fancy that St. Peter had intimated to the Christians, "That his care over them should not cease by death; but that by his intercession before God,after his departure, he would do the same thing for them that he had done before in his life by teaching and preaching." Surely it is a sign of a desperate cause, and that men are put to the most wretched shifts to maintain a party or faction, when they make use of such despicable proofs! "I was of opinion, says Dr. Heylin, that probably St. Peter fulfilled this promise, not only by leaving these epistles behind him, but by leaving also some directions with St. Jude, who, in his epistle to the same persons, repeats many things from this, with such a sameness, as I thought difficult to be accounted for any other way, till I saw a more satisfactory solution of the difficulty, in that admirable performance, 'The Use and Intent of Prophesy;' where, in the first dissertation, it is shewn, from some passages quoted from the Apostolical constitutions, that it is highly reasonable to suppose, that the apostles had a meeting upon the extraordinary case of the new false teachers; and that they gave jointly, by common consent and deliberation, precepts proper to the occasion, to be communicated to all churches by their respective apostles and bishops; that accordingly many circular letters were sent for that purpose; and that the second epistle of St. Peter, and St. Jude's epistle, seem to be of this sort, &c."