ds and labor; nor must they even preach,
but only live without care in their luxury, and keep up good spirits
by feeding on the wealth that poor people earn by their sweat. So men
think they must be the best part, and the jewel, as it were, of
Christendom, while they are merely shame-spots and an abomination,
and live well, as we say, on the wealth that belongs to them as
priests. They are without care or fear; they think the devil may not
overthrow them; they feed not the sheep, but are themselves the
wolves that devour the sheep; they are clouds that hang over us in
the air, sit up high in the churches, as those that should preach,
and yet they do not preach at all, but let themselves be driven by
the devil this way and the other.

So, too, he says, they are leafless, fruitless trees, like the trees
of autumn; they have neither fruit nor leaf; they stand there only
like other trees; let themselves be looked upon as Christian bishops,
but there is with them neither word nor work, but all is dead to the
root. Moreover, they are like wild waves of the sea; that is, as the
wind tosses and throws up waves and billows upon the water, so these,
too, go just as the devil leads them. And they foam out their own
shame; like a heated pot, they are so full of pollution that they run
over, and cannot retain command of themselves, but all must out. They
are wandering stars, planets as they are called, that go backward,
and not in a steady, straight course, so that they make no true
progress; their life and doctrine is mere error, in which they lead
themselves astray, and all that follow after them. Therefore for them
is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

Thus Jude has appraised and painted our spiritual masters, who, under
the name of Christ and Christianity, introduce all sorts of
profligacy, and snatch to themselves all the wealth of the world, and
authoritatively subject all men to themselves.

There follows now, further:

V. 14. _Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of such, and
said, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to
execute judgment upon all._ This language of Enoch is nowhere to be
found in Scripture. For this reason some of the Fathers did not
receive this Epistle, although there is not a sufficient reason for
rejecting a book on this account. For St. Paul, also, in II. Tim.
iii., makes mention of two that opposed Moses, Jannes and Jambres,
names that are not even to be f