through which things very great and precious favors that were promised have been given us, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through desire:

so, even for this very purpose, uniting to these things all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge;

For if these things be in you, and abound, they cause you to be neither idle, nor unfruitful as it respects the acknowledgment of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But he who is wanting in these things is blind, and closes his eyes, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

Wherefore, brethren, give the greater diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, you will never fall.

Wherefore, I will not neglect to remind you always of these things, though you know them, and are established in the present truth.

But I will earnestly endeavor that you may be able, even after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance.

But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers also among you; and these will stealthily introduce ruinous sects, and deny the Lord that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction:

and, with delusive words, they will, through covetousness, make gain of you: the condemnation, long ago denounced against these, delays not, and their destruction does not slumber.

But these men, like beasts with out reason, which follow the instinct of nature, and are made to be taken and destroyed, speaking evil of things that they understand not, shall utterly perish in their own corruption,

These men are fountains without water, clouds driven by a tempest, for whom the gloom of darkness is reserved forever.

For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in these, and overcome by them, the last state of such is worse than the first.

This second letter I now write to you, beloved; in both of these I arouse your pure mind to remembrance,

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

as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.

Do you, therefore, beloved, since you know these things be forehand, beware, lest, being led away with the error of the wicked, you fall from your own steadfastness.