for if you are possess'd of these virtues and improve therein, they will prevent the knowledge you have of our Lord Jesus Christ from being useless to others, and unprofitable to yourselves.

By their artful discourses they will make you the tools of their avarice; but their condemnation has been a long time advancing, and their ruin is far from lingring.

for since God did not spare the angels, who had sinned, but having precipitated them to hell, confin'd them to chains of darkness, where they are reserv'd for judgment:

But as for these, they have no more reason than brute beasts that are naturally made for hunting, and slaughter: so these who calumniate what they do not understand, shall receive the reward of their iniquity by perishing in their own corruption.

they place their felicity in daily pleasure: they are a vile scandal to religion: when they are present at your love-feasts they indulge their luxury:

their eyes are inflam'd with adultery, and unextinguishable vice: they insnare the souls of the inconstant. their minds are practis'd in the arts of avarice: an execrable race, who have deserted the right way,

when their language swells with vanity, by applying to the sensual passions of the licentious, they allure those who were escap'd for a while, from such deceivers:

whilst they promise others liberty, they themselves are slaves to their corrupt passions. for he that is vanquished, is a slave to the conqueror.

As for those who have renounc'd the pollutions of the world, by their owning Jesus Christ for their Lord and saviour, if they are prevail'd upon to be entangled therein again, their last state is worse than the first.

for it had been better for them, not to have made any profession of the gospel, than after they have embraced it, to abandon the holy injunction, that was delivered to them.

but they are wilfully ignorant, that the heavens were originally form'd by the divine Logos, and likewise the earth, which was separated from the water, and still subsists upon it.

as it were in all his epistles, where he takes notice of these things: in which there are some passages that are difficult to understand, which the illiterate, and unstable wrest, as they do the rest of the scriptures, to their own ruin.