when they see your modest and respectful behavior [together with your devotion and appreciation—love your husband, encourage him, and enjoy him as a blessing from God].

but reverence Christ as Lord in your own hearts. Always be ready with a reply for anyone who calls you to account for the hope you cherish, but answer gently and with a sense of reverence;

And baptism, of which this is an image, now gives you salvation, not by washing clean the flesh, but by making you free from the sense of sin before God, through the coming again of Jesus Christ from the dead;

Being conscious in the first place that no man by himself may give a special sense to the words of the prophets.

The Lord is not slow about His promise, in the sense in which some think of slowness, but He is really dealing patiently with you, because He is not willing for any to perish but for all to have an opportunity to repent?

These people are stains on your love feasts. They feast with you without any sense of awe. They are shepherds who care only for themselves. They are waterless clouds blown about by the winds. They are autumn trees that are fruitless, totally dead, and uprooted.

And their dead bodies will lie exposed in the open street of the great city (Jerusalem), which in a spiritual sense is called [by the symbolic and allegorical names of] Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.