, who forgives us our sins from pure grace. By this confession
we escape the vice and come out from the pollution of the world. But
though they should already have been delivered from sin in baptism,
they shall afterwards be plunged therein, for that they have again
gone from faith to their own works. For where there is no faith, the
Spirit is absent; but where the Spirit is absent, there is nothing
but flesh, so that there can be nothing at all that is pure. So has
it come to pass hitherto in regard to Christianity. Rome first heard
the pure Gospel, but afterward went back and fell away to human
doctrines, until even upon herself all abominations have come up; so
that her last end has become worse than her first, in that she is now
far more hopeless in her heathenism than she ever was before she
heard the word of God.

V. 21. _For it had been far better for them that they had never known
the way of righteousness, than that they should know it, and turn
themselves away from the holy command that has been given them. For
it has happened to them according to the proverb, The dog turns to
his own vomit again, and the sow after her washing wallows in the
mire._ This proverb St. Peter has taken out of the book of Prov.
xxvi., where Solomon says, "A man who repeats his folly is like the
dog who turns again to his vomit." By baptism they have thrown off
unbelief, and have been washed from their polluted life, and have
entered upon a pure life of faith and love, while they fall off from
it again to unbelief and their own works, and defile themselves again
in the dirt. So that we are not to make this proverb bear on works;
for little is accomplished by one's saying and directing at
confession, "Thou shalt henceforth be chaste, meek, and patient," &c.
But if you will be pious, pray God that he will give you a real
faith, and see to it that you forsake your unbelief. When you shall
then have attained faith, good works shall afterwards take care of
themselves, so that you will live purely and chastely, even though
you should secure yourself by no other means; and though, again, you
might awhile conceal the mischief in your heart, yet at last it comes
out.

This is the second chapter of this Epistle, wherein Peter speaks
specially of our teachers, how shamefully we have been treated by
them. We have indeed had warning enough, but we have not minded it,
so that the fault is ours that we have not laid hold on the Gospel,
and that