¹³I had many things to write to thee, but I wish not to write to thee with ink and pen; ¹⁴but I hope immediately to see thee, and we shall speak face to face.

Peace be to thee. The friends salute thee. Salute the friends, by name.

[THE GENERAL LETTER OF JUDE.]

JUDE, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept by Jesus Christ^[1]: ²Mercy, and peace, and love, be multiplied to you.

³Beloved, while giving all diligence to write to you concerning the common salvation, I found it needful for me to write to you exhorting to contend earnestly for the faith, delivered once for all to the saints. ⁴For there crept in stealthily certain men, who of old were appointed beforehand to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into wantonness, and denying the only Master, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵But I wish to remind you, as once knowing all, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who believed not. ⁶And angels who kept not their principality, but left their own habitation, he has kept in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day. ⁷As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, in like manner with them giving themselves over to fornication, and going away after other flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

⁸Yet, in like manner, these also in their dreamings defile the flesh, despise dominion, and rail at dignities. ⁹But Michael the archangel, when, contending with the Devil, he disputed concerning the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing judgment, but said: The Lord rebuke thee. ¹⁰But these rail at the things which they know not; but what things naturally, as the brute beasts, they understand, in these they corrupt themselves.

¹¹Woe to them! For they went in the way of Cain, and rushed on in the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.

¹²These are rocks in your feasts of love, feasting with you fearlessly, feeding their own selves; clouds without water, carried away by winds; autumnal trees, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; ¹³raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness is reserved forever.