the word of God, tread it under your feet and pay no attention to
it.

_Not conformed to the former lusts of your ignorance._ That is, that
you should not exhibit such ostentation and lead such a course of
life as before, and that you be not found in the same condition in
which you formerly were. Once you were godless, and lived in
lewdness, gluttony, drunkenness, avarice, pride, anger, envy and
hate, which was an evil, heathen-like state, and one of unbelief, and
when you had gone into such a state like the blind, you have not
known what you have done. Avoid now those same evil lusts. Here you
perceive how he makes the charge against ignorance, that all evil
proceeds therefrom. For where faith and the knowledge of Christ are
wanting, there remains mere error and blindness, so that men are
ignorant of what is right and wrong, insomuch that the people fall
into every kind of vice.

Thus has it been hitherto: where Christ has been kept out of sight
and eclipsed, there error has begun to prevail; and throughout the
world the question has torn its way, how man may be saved. This is at
once a sign of blindness or ignorance, that the true apprehension of
faith is lost, and no one knows anything more about it. Hence the
world is so full of such various sects, and all are divided, for
every one will devise for himself a way to heaven of his own. In our
misfortune we must be continually falling deeper in our blindness,
since we cannot help ourselves. Therefore St. Peter would say: Ye
have already befooled yourselves enough; now desist therefrom, since
ye have been instructed and have attained to a correct understanding.

V. 15, 16. _But according as He that hath called you is holy, so be
ye also holy in all your conduct, as it is written, Be ye holy for I
am holy._ Here St. Peter quotes a passage from the Old Testament,
Lev. xix., where God says: "Be ye holy for I am holy;" that is, since
I am your Lord and God, and ye are my people, ye too must be as I am.
For a faithful master secures that his people shall be like him, and
walk in obedience, and be conformed to the master's will. As then God
our Master is holy, so are His people holy also, and we are all holy
if we walk in faith. Scripture says not much of the saints that have
died, but of those who live on the earth. So David puts forth his
claim in Ps. lxxxv.: "Lord, preserve my soul, for I am holy."

But here our learned men have for once perverted the passage, and