seeing that His divine power has given us all things that are needful for life and godliness, through our knowledge of Him who has appealed to us by His own glorious perfections.

For the man in whom they are lacking is blind and cannot see distant objects, in that he has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his old sins.

For this reason I shall always persist in reminding you of these things, although you know them and are stedfast believers in truth which you already possess.

and especially those who are abandoned to sensuality--craving, as they do, for polluted things, and scorning control. Fool-hardy and self-willed, they do not tremble when speaking evil of glorious beings;

being doomed to receive a requital for their guilt. They reckon it pleasure to feast daintily in broad daylight. They are spots and blemishes, while feeding luxuriously at their love-feasts, and banqueting with you.

Their very eyes are full of adultery--being eyes which never cease from sin. These men set traps to catch unstedfast souls, their own hearts being well trained in greed. They are fore-doomed to God's curse!

These people are wells without water, mists driven along by a storm, men for whom the dense darkness has been reserved.

For, while they pour out their frivolous and arrogant talk, they use earthly cravings--every kind of immorality--as a bait to entrap men who are just escaping from the influence of those who live in error.

And they promise them freedom, although they are themselves the slaves of what is corrupt. For a man is the slave of any one by whom he has been worsted in fight.

For if, after escaping from the pollutions of the world through a full knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, people are once more entangled in these pollutions and are overcome, their last state has become worse than their first.

For they are wilfully blind to the fact that there were heavens which existed of old, and an earth, the latter arising out of water and extending continuously through water, by the command of God;

But the present heavens and the present earth are, by the command of the same God, kept stored up, reserved for fire in preparation for a day of judgement and of destruction for the ungodly.

Since all these things are thus pre-destined to dissolution, what sort of men ought you to be found to be in all holy living and godly conduct,

But in accordance with His promise we are expecting new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness will dwell.

That is what he says in all his letters, when speaking in them of these things. In those letters there are some statements hard to understand, which ill-taught and unprincipled people pervert, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own ruin.