The General Epistle of James Chapter I.

[The apostle's address: he exhorteth to patience in affliction, 6 to pray in faith. 14 Our lusts tempt us to sin.]

JAMES, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus
Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered 
abroad, greeting.
2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into 
divers temptations; 
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith 
worketh patience. 
4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye 
may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. 
5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, 
that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; 
and it shall be given him. 
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For 
he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven 
with the wind and tossed. 
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive 
any thing of the Lord. 
8 A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. 
9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that 
he is exalted:
10 But the rich, in that he is made low: because 
as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. 
11 For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning 
heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof
falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth:
so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. 
12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: 
for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown life, 
which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. 
13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am 
tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with 
evil, neither tempteth he any man:
14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn 
away of his own lust, and enticed. 
15 Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth
forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth 
death. 
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. 
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from
above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, 
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning. 
18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of 
truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of 
his creatures. 
19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every 
man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
20 For the wrath of man worth not the righteousness 
of God. 
21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness, and superfluity 
of naughtiness and receive with meekness the 
ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers 
only, deceiving your own selves 
23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not 
a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural 
face in a glass:
24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and 
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 
25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of 
liberty, and continuity therein, he being not a forgetful 
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall 
be blessed in his deed. 
26 If any man among you seem to be religious,
and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own 
heart, this man's religion is vain. 
27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and 
the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows 
in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted 
from the world.