rome's
Epistles.

_And they deny God, that he alone is Lord, and our Lord Jesus
Christ._ This is what St. Peter said also in his Epistle; but this
they deny (as we have heard). It is not done by their _mouth_, for
with this they confess that God is one Lord, but they deny that
Christ is Lord in fact, and by their works; they hold, not Him, but
themselves as their Lord,--for while they preach that fasts,
pilgrimages, church ordinances, chastity, obedience, poverty, etc.,
are the way to salvation, they lead the people astray to their own
works, and yet are silent about Christ; and it is just as much as if
they said, Christ is of no avail to you, His works noway help you,
but you must by your own works merit salvation. Thus they deny the
Lord who has bought us with his blood, as Peter says.

V. 5, 6, 7. _I will therefore remind you that ye once knew this, that
the Lord, when he saved the people out of Egypt, afterward destroyed
those that believed not. Also, the angels, who kept not their first
estate, but left their own habitation, he has reserved to the
judgment of the great day, in everlasting chains, under darkness. As
also Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities lying about them, which in
like manner as these, rioted in fornication, and went after strange
flesh, are set forth for an example, and bear the pain of eternal
fire._ Here he adduces, also, three examples, as St. Peter does in
his Epistle; but the first which he presents is to this effect: that
God permitted the children of Israel whom he had brought out of Egypt
by many wonderful works, when they did not believe, to be overthrown
and defeated, so that of them all not more than two survived, when
there were numbered, of all that went forth from twenty years of age
and above, more than six hundred thousand men. This example he sets
forth as a warning and a terror; as though he should say, those who
are now called Christians, and under this name turn the grace of God
into wantonness, are to beware to themselves that it do not come to
pass with them as it came to pass with those. And true enough, these
are the times when the Popedom is exalted and the Gospel kept secret
through the whole world; when, too, there comes continually one
plague after another, by which God has punished the unbelieving and
thrown them into the throat of the Devil.

V. 8. _Like them also are these dreamers, who defile the flesh._
These teachers he calls dreamers; for just as when a