whereby superlatively great and precious promises are freely given to us: that by these ye might become partakers of a divine nature, having fled far away from the corruption that is in the world through inordinate concupiscence.??5 And for this very purpose employing the greatest diligence, lead up in the train of your faith courage; and with courage intelligence;

For if these things are in your possession, and abounding, they will render you neither inactive nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But he that hath no possession of these things, is blind, dim-sighted, sinking into oblivion of his purification from the sins of his former days.

Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make sure your calling and election: for by doing these things, ye shall never at any time stumble:

Wherefore I will not be negligent continually to remind you of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the present truth.

I will endeavour then that even after my decease, ye may always have wherewith to preserve the remembrance of these things.

But these men, as the naturally irrational brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speaking evil of the things of which they are ignorant, will perish by their own corruption;

These are fountains without water, clouds driven by a hurricane; for whom the blackness of darkness for ever is reserved.

Seeing then that all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in a course of holy conduct and acts of piety,

Wherefore, beloved, seeing ye are expecting these things, be diligent to be found of him in peace, spotless and blameless.

as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, of which some are difficult to be understood, which the uninstructed and the unstable torture, as indeed they do the rest of the scriptures unto their own destruction.

Ye therefore, beloved, knowing this before, be on your guard, that ye be not carried away with the delusion of these lawless men, and fall from your own stedfastness.