Be on your guard lest your minds should ever be dulled by debauches or drunkenness or the anxieties of life, and lest 'That Day' should come suddenly upon you, like a snare.
By that which fell among the brambles are meant those who hear the Message, but who, as they go on their way, are completely choked by this world's cares and wealth and pleasures, and bring nothing to perfection.
Surely you know that, when you offer yourselves as servants, to obey any one, you are the servants of the person whom you obey, whether the service be that of Sin which leads to Death, or that of Duty which leads to Righteousness.
Do not you know that your bodies are Christ's members? Am I, then, to take the members that belong to the Christ and make them the members of a prostitute? Heaven forbid!
Why, then, if you have cases relating to the affairs of this life, do you set to try them men who carry no weight with the Church? To your shame I ask it.
Remember, God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them down to Tartarus, and committed them to caverns of darkness, to be kept under guard for judgment.
and that even those angels, who did not keep to their appointed spheres, but left their proper homes, have been kept by him for the judgment of the Great Day in everlasting chains and black darkness.