For he in whom these things are not present is blind, being near-sighted, having deliberately forgotten the purification of his former sins.

For if, after men have escaped the corrupting ways of the world through a full knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they again become entangled in them and are conquered by them, then their last condition is worse than their former one.

For they willingly ignore the fact that there were heaven, from of old, and an earth formed out of water and through water, by the word of God;

whence the former world was destroyed by an inundation.