Book of Common Prayer

¹⁶ Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and innocent as doves. ¹⁷ Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and will scourge you in their synagogues. ¹⁸ And you will be brought to the head governors and kings for my sake, in witness to them and to the Gentiles.

¹⁹ But when they deliver you up, do not be anxious about how or what you will speak, for it will be given you even in that same hour what you should say. ²⁰ For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.

²¹ Brother will betray brother to death, and the father the son. And children will arise against their fathers and mothers, and will put them to death. ²² And you will be hated by all men for my name. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.

¹² Stretch forth therefore again the hands that were let down, and the weak knees, ¹³ and see that you have straight steps for your feet, lest any limping turn you out of the way; yea let it rather be healed. ¹⁴ Embrace peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

¹⁵ And see to it that no one be destitute of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness spring up and cause trouble, and thereby many be defiled; ¹⁶ and that there be no fornicator or unclean person like Esau, who for one breakfast sold his birthright. ¹⁷ You know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was put by, and he found no means to come by it again; no, though he sought it with tears.

¹⁸ For you have not come to the mount that can be touched, and to burning fire, nor yet to mist and darkness and tempest of weather, ¹⁹ neither to the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, which voice the people that heard it wished away so that the message would not be spoken to them. ²⁰ For they were not able to abide that which was spoken. If a beast had touched the mountain, it was to have been stoned or thrust through with a dart. ²¹ Even so terrible was the sight that appeared, Moses said, I fear and quake!

²² But you have come to the mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the celestial Jerusalem, and to an innumerable multitude of angels, ²³ and to the congregation of the first born sons, whose names are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just and perfect, ²⁴ and to Jesus, the mediator of the new testament, and to the sprinkling of blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel.