For, when these virtues are yours, in increasing measure, they prevent your being indifferent to, or destitute of, a fuller knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In their covetousness they will try to make you a source of profit by their fabrications; but for a long time past their Sentence has not been standing idle, nor their Ruin slumbering.

Remember, God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them down to Tartarus, and committed them to caverns of darkness, to be kept under guard for judgment.

especially those who, following the promptings of their lower nature, indulge their polluting passions and despise all control. Audacious and self-willed, they feel no awe of the Mighty, maligning them,

These men, however, like animals without reason, intended by nature to be caught and killed--these men, I say, malign those of whom they know nothing, and will assuredly perish through their own corruption,

suffering themselves, as the penalty for the suffering that they have inflicted. They think that pleasure consists in the self-indulgence of the moment. They are a stain and a disgrace, indulging, as they do, in their wanton revelry, even while joining you at your feasts.

They have eyes only for adulteresses, eyes never tired of sin; they entice weak souls; their minds are trained to covet; they live under a curse.

Leaving the straight road, they have gone astray and followed in the steps of Balaam, the son of Beor, who set his heart on the reward for wrong-doing,

With boastful and foolish talk, they appeal to the passions of man's lower nature, and, by their profligacy, entice those who are just escaping from the men who live such misguided lives.

They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to corrupt habits; for a man is the slave of anything to which he gives way.

For they wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that long ago the heavens existed; and the earth, also--formed out of water and by the action of water, by the fiat of God;

It is the same in all his letters, when he speaks in them about these subjects. There are some things in them difficult to understand, which untaught and weak people distort, just as they do all other writings, to their own Ruin.