Chapter 1

  James the servant of God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.  

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  My brethren, count it all joy, when you shall fall into divers temptations;  

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  Knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience.  

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  And patience hath a perfect work; that you may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing.  

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  But if any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men abundantly, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.  

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  But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, which is moved and carried about by the wind.  

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  Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.  

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  A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways.  

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  But let the brother of low condition glory in his exaltation:  

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  And the rich, in his being low; because as the flower of the grass shall he pass away.  

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  For the sun rose with a burning heat, and parched the grass, and the flower thereof fell off, and the beauty of the shape thereof perished: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.  

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  Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been proved, he shall receive a crown of life, which God hath promised to them that love him.  

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  Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no man.  

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  But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured.  

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  Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death.  

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  Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren.  

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  Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.  

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  For of his own will hath he begotten us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of his creatures.  

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  You know, my dearest brethren. And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger.  

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  For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.  

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  Wherefore casting away all uncleanness, and abundance of naughtiness, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls.  

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  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.  

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  For if a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he shall be compared to a man beholding his own countenance in a glass.  

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  For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was.  

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  But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty, and hath continued therein, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work; this man shall be blessed in his deed.  

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  And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain.  

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  Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation: and to keep one's self unspotted from this world.  

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