by which are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye may become partakers of a divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Wherefore I will not neglect to put you always in mind of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the present truth.

especially those who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise authority; who, being audacious and self-willed, are not afraid to speak evil of dignities:

whereas angels, who are greater in strength and power, bring not a reviling accusation against them before the Lord.

who have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity;

These are wells without water, clouds driven by a storm, for whom thick darkness is reserved for ever.

promising them liberty, while they themselves are the slaves of corruption: for by whom any one is vanquished, by him he is also enslaved.

For if, after they had escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled and vanquished by them, their last state is worse than the first;

walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the declaration of his coming? for except that the fathers are fallen asleep, all things remain as they were from the beginning of the creation.

For they are willingly ignorant of this, that by the Word of God the heavens were made of old, and the earth too from the water, and subsisting on the water.

But the heavens and the earth, that now are, by the same Word are kept in store, reserved unto fire on the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men.

as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things: in which are some things hard to be understood, which the illiterate and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.