the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the
unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished_, in the lake of fire; _but
chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness_, [24]
being made drunk with the wine of the Whore's fornication; who _despise
dominion, and are not afraid to blaspheme glories_; for the beast opened
his mouth against God [25] to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle, and
them that dwell in heaven. _These, as natural brute beasts_, the ten-horned
beast and two-horned beast, or false Prophet, _made to be taken and
destroyed_, in the lake of fire, _blaspheme the things they understand
not_:--they count it pleasure to riot in the day-time--sporting themselves
with their own deceivings, while they feast [26] with you, _having eyes
full of an [27] Adulteress_: for the kingdoms of the beast live deliciously
with the great Whore, and the nations are made drunk with the wine of her
fornication. They _are gone astray, following the way of _Balaam_, the son
of _Beor_, who loved the wages of unrighteousness_, the false Prophet [28]
who taught _Balak_ to cast a stumbling-block before the children of
_Israel_. _These are_, not fountains of living water, but _wells without
water_; not such clouds of Saints as the two witnesses ascend in, but
_clouds that are carried with a tempest_, &c. Thus does the author of this
Epistle spend all the second Chapter in describing the qualities of the
_Apocalyptic_ Beasts and false Prophet: and then in the third he goes on to
describe their destruction more fully, and the future kingdom. He saith,
that because the coming of _Christ_ should be long deferred, they should
scoff, saying, _where is the promise of his coming_? Then he describes the
sudden coming of the day of the Lord upon them, _as a thief in the night_,
which is the _Apocalyptic_ phrase; and the _millennium_, or _thousand
years_, which _are with God but as a day_; the _passing away of the old
heavens_ and earth, by a conflagration in the lake of fire, and our
_looking for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness_.

Seeing therefore _Peter_ and _John_ were Apostles of the circumcision, it
seems to me that they staid with their Churches in _Judea_ and _Syria_ till
the _Romans_ made war upon their nation, that is, till the twelfth year of
_Nero_; that they then followed the main body of their flying Churches into
_Asia_, and that _Peter_ went thence by _Corinth_ to _Rome_; that the