1:4. And patience hath a perfect work: that you may be perfect and
entire, failing in nothing.
1:5. 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.
1:6. 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.
1:7. Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing
of the Lord.
1:8. A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways.
1:9. But let the brother of low condition glory in his exaltation:
1:10. And the rich, in his being low: because as the flower of the
grass shall he pass away.
1:11. 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.
1:12. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for, when he hath
been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which God hath promised
to them that love him.
1:13. 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.
1:14. But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn
away and allured.
1:15. Then, when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin.
But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death.
1:16. Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren.
1:17. 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.
1:18. For of his own will hath he begotten us by the word of truth,
that we might be some beginning of his creature.
Some beginning.... That is, a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
1:19. You know, my dearest brethren. And let every man be swift to
hear, but slow to speak and slow to anger.
1:20. For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.
1:21. Wherefore, casting away all uncleanness and abundance of
naughtiness, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to
save your souls.
1:22. But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your
own selves.
1:23. 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.
1:24. For he beheld himself and went his way and presently forgot what
manner of man he was.
1:25. 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.
1:26. And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his
tongue but deceiving his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.
1:27. 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.