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¹ Finally, my brethren, we intreat and conjure you by the Lord Jesus Christ, to observe the instructions we gave you about your religious conduct, and to make continual progress therein. ² for you know the precepts we gave you in the name of the Lord Jesus. ³ and such is the will of God, that you should be holy, and avoid licentiousness; ⁴ that every one of you should take care to preserve the dignity of his ⁵ person unsullied by the vices of the Gentiles, who know not God: ⁶ that no man should be exorbitant, and behave contumeliously to his brother: because the Lord is the avenger of all such crimes, as we have formerly remonstrated to you. ⁷ for God has not called us to impurity, but to holiness: ⁸ he therefore that violates these precepts, does not despise man, but God, who has endued me with his holy spirit.

⁹ As to brotherly love, I have no occasion to write about it, God himself having instructed you to love one another. ¹⁰ this indeed you practise towards all our brethren in Macedonia; and we only exhort you to advance more and more therein: ¹¹ to study your own quiet, to mind your own affairs, and follow some handicraft trade, as we recommended it to you: ¹² so that your way of life may stand fair to the world, and prevent your being dependent upon any man.

¹³ Now I would not have you, my brethren, be mistaken about the state of the dead, lest you should be as greatly afflicted as those, who have no hope. ¹⁴ for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we must believe that God by Jesus will raise the dead, and assemble them with him. ¹⁵ for one thing I have in charge to tell you from the Lord, that we, who shall be found still alive at the coming of the Lord, shall not get the advance of those that are dead: ¹⁶ for the Lord himself will descend from heaven, and by the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, resound the summons: they who died christians shall rise first: ¹⁷ then we, who shall be still alive, shall be convey'd together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall ever be with the Lord. ¹⁸ therefore comfort one another with this information.