James 1

¹James the servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes that are in dispersion, greeting.

²Esteem it, my brethren, all joy, when you shall fall into diverse tentations:

³knowing that the probation of your faith worketh patience.

⁴And let patience have a perfect work: that you may be perfect & entire, failing in nothing.

⁵But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men aboundantly, and upbraideth not: and it shall be given him.

⁶But let him ask in faith nothing doubting. For he that doubteth, is like to a wave of the sea, which is moved & carried about by the wind.

⁷Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of our Lord.

⁸Aman double of mind is inconstant in all his ways.

⁹But let the humble brother glory, in his exaltation:

¹⁰and the rich, in his humility, because as the flower of grass shall he pass:

¹¹for the sun rose with heat, & parched the grass, and the flower of it fell away, and the beauty of the shape thereof perished: so the rich man also shall wither in his ways.

¹²Blessed is the man that suffereth tentation: for when he hath been proved, he shall receive the crown of life, which God hath promised to them that love him.

¹³Let no man when he is tempted, say that he is tempted of God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no man.

¹⁴But every one is tempted of his own concupiscence abstracted and allured.

¹⁵Afterward concupiscence when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin. But sin when it is consummate, engendereth death.

¹⁶Do not err therefore, my dearest brethren.

¹⁷Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, descending from the Father of lights, with whom is no transmutation, nor shadowing of alteration.

¹⁸Voluntarily hath he begotten us by the word of truth, that we may be some beginning of his creature.

¹⁹You know, my dearest brethren. And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger.

²⁰For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.

²¹For the which thing casting away all uncleanness and aboundance of malice, in meekness receive the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

²²But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

²³For if a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer: he shall be compared to a man beholding the countenance of his nativity in a glass.

²⁴For he considered himself, and went his way, and by and by forgat what an one he was.

²⁵But he that hath looked in the law of perfect liberty, and hath remained in it, not made a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work; this man shall be blessed in his deed.

²⁶And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but seducing his heart, this man's religion is vain.

²⁷Religion clean and unspotted with God and the Father, is this, to visit pupils and widows in their tribulation: and to keep himself unspotted from this world.