s
already, before this, been once preached to you; or as though he
should say, It is necessary that I should admonish you that ye be on
your guard and remain in the right way; but as to why this is needed,
he gives the reason, and says:

V. 4. _For there are some men who have secretly come in, who were
ordained of old to this condemnation._ For this cause will I remind
you that ye should abide in the faith which ye have heard, because
there is even now a wavering, and already there have come preachers,
who set up other doctrines besides faith, by which people are led
away gently and unsuspectingly from the true way. So St. Peter also
said, in his Epistle, "there shall be false teachers among you, who
shall secretly bring in destructive heresies, &c." These, he says,
"are long ago appointed to such a sentence of condemnation." This we
now well understand, since we know that no one is righteous and
justified by works of his own, but only through faith in Christ,
insomuch that he must rely on the work of Christ as his chief good.
Then where there is faith, whatever is done as works is all done for
the good of our neighbor, and thus we guard ourselves against all
works which are not performed with the intent that they shall be of
service to our neighbor, as is now the estate of priests and monks.
Therefore wherever any one now secretly introduces anything else than
this doctrine of faith, in regard to such orders and works, he leads
the people astray, so that they shall be condemned along with him.

_Who are godless, and turn the grace of God into wantonness._ That
Gospel which is given us concerning the grace of God, and which sets
Christ before us, as he is offered to and bestowed upon us, with all
that he has, that we may be freed from sin, death and all evil, such
grace and blessing offered to us by the Gospel, they use merely to
indulge their wantonness,--that is, they call themselves Christians,
indeed, and praise the Gospel, but they bring in such an order, as
therein to work their own caprice, in eating and drinking and wanton
life, while they make their boast and say we are not in a secular but
a spiritual estate, and under such names and pretence they have
grasped all enjoyment, honor and pleasure. This, already, says Jude,
begins. For we read that it had already begun a thousand years ago;
that the bishops then wished to be Lords and to be more highly
exalted than common christians, as we also see in St. Je