Chapter 4

  Whence [are] wars and fightings among you? not thence -- out of your passions, that are as soldiers in your members?  

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  ye desire, and ye have not; ye murder, and are zealous, and are not able to attain; ye fight and war, and ye have not, because of your not asking;  

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  ye ask, and ye receive not, because evilly ye ask, that in your pleasures ye may spend [it].  

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  Adulterers and adulteresses! have ye not known that friendship of the world is enmity with God? whoever, then, may counsel to be a friend of the world, an enemy of God he is set.  

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  Do ye think that emptily the Writing saith, 'To envy earnestly desireth the spirit that did dwell in us,'  

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  and greater grace he doth give, wherefore he saith, 'God against proud ones doth set Himself up, and to lowly ones He doth give grace?'  

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  be subject, then, to God; stand up against the devil, and he will flee from you;  

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  draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you; cleanse hands, ye sinners! and purify hearts, ye two-souled!  

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  be exceeding afflicted, and mourn, and weep, let your laughter to mourning be turned, and the joy to heaviness;  

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  be made low before the Lord, and He shall exalt you.  

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  Speak not one against another, brethren; he who is speaking against a brother, and is judging his brother, doth speak against law, and doth judge law, and if law thou dost judge, thou art not a doer of law but a judge;  

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  one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy; thou -- who art thou that dost judge the other?  

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  Go, now, ye who are saying, 'To-day and to-morrow we will go on to such a city, and will pass there one year, and traffic, and make gain;'  

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  who do not know the thing of the morrow; for what is your life? for it is a vapour that is appearing for a little, and then is vanishing;  

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  instead of your saying, 'If the Lord may will, we shall live, and do this or that;'  

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  and now ye glory in your pride; all such glorying is evil;  

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  to him, then, knowing to do good, and not doing, sin it is to him.  

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