By which are given unto us exceedingly great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But he that lacks these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

Therefore rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, you shall never fall:

Therefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them, and are established in the present truth.

Moreover I will endeavor that you may be able after my departure to have these things always in remembrance.

But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conduct and godliness,

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable twist, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

You therefore, beloved, seeing you know these things beforehand, beware lest you also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.