unto you: cleanse your hands [doings], ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye who halt between God and the world.

9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep for your sins: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

11 And ye who have been converted, speak not evil one of another: ye are brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law [Lev. xix. 16], and judgeth the law but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.

12 There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy who art thou that judgest another?

13 Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:

14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.

17 Therefore I have told you, remember the Scripture saith [Luke xii. 47], To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

CHAP. V.

1 GO to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries, that shall come upon you [shortly from the Romans].

2 Your riches are heaped up till they have corrupted you; your garments are in like manner accumulated till they are moth-eaten.

3 Your gold and silver is cankered by hoarding, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall cause you to be tortured by your enemies for the discovery of it. Ye have heaped treasure together for them in the end.

4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped, are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as sacrifices are fattened for the day of slaughter.

6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

7 Brethren, ye hear these denunciations against your oppressors; be patient, therefore, unto the coming of the Lord: establish your hearts in faith. Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

8 Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the judgment of the Lord draweth nigh.

9 Grudge not [contend not] one against another, brethren, lest ye be involved in the coming judgments: behold, the time is nigh, the Judge standeth as it were before the door [ready to enter].

10 My brethren, if ye require examples of patient suffering in the cause of God, call to mind the holy prophets, who have in former times spoken in the name of the Lord.

11 Behold, we count them happy which endure in such a cause. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen how the Lord recompensed him in the end; the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.

12 But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay ; lest ye fall into condemnation.

13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.

14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. Mark vi. 13.

15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if his sickness be brought upon him by his own sins, they shall be forgiven him.

16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

17 Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain :

and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.

18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. 1 Kings xvii. 1.

19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;

20 Let him know that he which converteth a sinner from the error of his way, shall be the means of doing away the multitude of sins, and save his soul from everlasting death.

THE

FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER.

This Epistle was written by Peter the Apostle from Babylon. chap. v. 13.

It is generally supposed that by Babylon he meant Rome. It is addressed to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

The date of the Epistle is not exactly known.

It contains five chapters.

CHAP. I.

1 PETER, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the Christians, strangers and pilgrims on earth, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,

2 Elect [chosen to the privileges of the gospel] according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying influence of the Holy Ghost, whereby ye are enabled to be obedient to the gospel,