THE CATHOLIC EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE
St. Jude, who wrote this Epistle, was one of the twelve Apostles and brother to St. James the Less. The time it was written is uncertain: only it may be inferred from verse 17 that few or none of the Apostles were then living, except St. John. He inveighs against the heresies and wicked practices of the Simonians, Nicolaites, and Gnostics, etc., describing them and their leaders by strong epithets and similes, He exhorts the faithful to contend earnestly for the faith first delivered to them and to beware of heretics.
Jude Chapter 1
He exhorts them to stand to the faith first delivered to them and to beware of heretics.
1:1. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called.
1:2. Mercy unto you and peace: and charity be fulfilled.
1:3. Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.
1:4. For certain men are secretly entered in (who were written of long ago unto this judgment), ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into riotousness and denying the only sovereign Ruler and our Lord Jesus Christ.
1:5. I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not.
1:6. And the angels who kept not their principality but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day.