For it was no fabricated fables that we followed when we reported to you the power and advent of our Lord Jesus Christ; we were admitted to the spectacle of his sovereignty,

when he was invested with honour and glory by God the Father, and when the following voice was borne to him from the sublime Glory, "This is my son, the Beloved, in whom I delight."

for prophecy never came by human impulse, it was when carried away by the holy Spirit that the holy men of God spoke.

if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorra to ashes when he sentenced them to devastation, and thus gave the impious an example of what was in store for them,

but rescued righteous Lot who was sore burdened by the immoral behaviour of the lawless

(for when that righteous man resided among them, by what he saw and heard his righteous soul was vexed day after day with their unlawful doings) ??9 then be sure the Lord knows how to rescue pious folk from trial, and how to keep the unrighteous under punishment till the day of doom,

Better had they never known the Way of righteousness, than to know it and then turn back from the holy command which was committed to them.

By water the then-existing world was deluged and destroyed,