Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But, as I have said, it is the same madness: they grant that the apostles lacked no knowledge and taught nothing conflicting among themselves, yet they will not allow that the apostles revealed everything to everyone. Some things, they say, were entrusted openly to all, other things secretly to a few — because Paul used just this word to Timothy: 'O Timothy, guard the deposit,' and again, 'Keep the good deposit.' What is this deposit? Something kept silent, to be assigned to another doctrine? Or is it that declaration of which he says: 'I commit this charge to you, my son Timothy'? Or perhaps that mandate of which he writes: 'I solemnly enjoin you before God, who gives life to all things, and Christ Jesus, who under Pontius Pilate testified the good confession, that you keep the commandment'? But what commandment, and what charge? From what is written before and after it was possible to understand — not that some hint of a more remote doctrine was being smuggled in, but rather that it was being driven home that no other doctrine was to be admitted besides the one Timothy had heard from Paul himself, and, I think, 'before many witnesses,' as he says. And if they refuse to understand those 'many witnesses' as the church, it makes no difference, since nothing that was delivered before many witnesses could have been kept secret. Nor, again, does the fact that Paul wanted these things entrusted to faithful men, competent also to teach others, give any ground for arguing some hidden gospel. For when he says this, he is speaking about the very people he was writing to at the time; had he meant hidden matters, kept from those not privy to the secret, he would have said something quite different from this.