To those to whom, through the justice of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, there has been granted faith equally privileged with our own, from Simon Peter, a servant and an Apostle of Jesus Christ.

For his divine power has given us everything that is needful for a life of piety, as we advance in the knowledge of him who called us by a glorious manifestation of his goodness.

Surely the man who has not these virtues is shortsighted even to blindness, and has chosen to forget that he has been purified from his sins of the past!

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.

These men are like springs without water, or mists driven before a gale; and for them the blackest darkness has been reserved.

If, after having escaped the polluting influences of the world, through knowing our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, men are again entangled in them, and give way to them, their last state has become worse than their first.

In their case is seen the truth of the proverb-- 'A dog returns to what he has vomited' and 'A sow after washing to her wallowing-place in the mud.'