should _bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them_, which is the character of _Antichrist_: _And many_, saith he, _shall follow their lusts_ [18]; they that dwell on the earth [19] shall be deceived by the false Prophet, and be made drunk with the wine of the Whore's fornication, _by reason of whom the way of truth shall be blasphemed_; for [20] the Beast is full of blasphemy: _and thro' covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandize of you_; for these are the Merchants of the Earth, who trade with the great Whore, and their merchandize [21] is all things of price, with the bodies and souls of men: _whose judgment--lingreth not, and their damnation [22] slumbreth not_, but shall surely come upon them at the last day suddenly, as the flood upon _the old world_, and fire and brimstone upon _Sodom_ and _Gomorrha_, when the just shall be delivered [23] like _Lot_; for _the Lord knoweth how to deliver 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