By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
Ver. 2. By which also ye are saved] Eternal life is potentially in the word, as the harvest is potentially in the seed, or as the tree is in the kernel or scion,James 1:21 .
If ye keep in memory] He limiteth the promise of salvation to the condition of keeping in memory what they had heard. Tantum didicimus, quantum meminimus, said Socrates; many have memories like nets, that let go the fair water, retain the filth only; or like sieves, that keep the chaff, let go the corn. If God come to search them with a candle, what shall he find but old songs, old wrongs, &c.? not a promise of any word of God hidden there: for things of that nature they are like Sabinus in Seneca, that never in all his life could remember those three names of Homer, Ulysses, and Achilles. But the soul should be as a holy ark, the memory like the pot of manna, preserving holy truths.