But how do they act to get the gold into their own hands? _With feigned words_, says Peter, _shall they make merchandise of you_. For they have selected the word by which they make money of the people, for this very purpose, as when they say, "If you give the dear Virgin, or this or that saint so many hundred florins, you do a most excellent good work, and merit so much indulgence and forgiving of sin, and ransom as many souls from purgatory." This and the like are just carefully feigned words, to the end that they may shave us of our gold; for in all this there is really no desert, nor grace, nor blotting out of sin. Still they explain the noble words of Scripture all of them in such a way, that they may traffic with them for gold. So, also, there has come of the holy, gracious Sacrament, nothing else but a traffic, for they do nothing with it but smear the people's mouth, and scrape their gold from them. Observe, then, whether St. Peter has not drawn and painted our clergy to the life. _Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not._ They shall not drive this on at length, nor carry it out, (he would say); for when they urge it most strongly, their sentence and condemnation shall fall upon them. Even now it goes forth; they shall not escape it,--as St. Paul also says, II. Tim. iii.: "Their folly shall be revealed to all, so that they shall be put to shame;" God grant that they may be converted and come out from their dangerous state, when they hear and understand it, for though there are some who have not been seduced into this state, yet is it in itself nothing but a mere pernicious sect. Thus St. Peter has attempted to describe the shameful, godless life that should succeed to the genuine doctrines of the Gospel, which the Apostles preached. Now he goes further, and sets before us three terrible examples--of the angels, of the whole world, and of Sodom, how God condemned them,--and speaks thus: