| 1 | James the servant of God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting. |
| 2 | My brethren, count it all joy, when you shall fall into divers temptations; |
| 3 | Knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience. |
| 4 | And patience hath a perfect work; that you may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 7 | Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. |
| 8 | A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways. |
| 9 | But let the brother of low condition glory in his exaltation: |
| 10 | And the rich, in his being low; because as the flower of the grass shall he pass away. |
| 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. |
| 12 | Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been proved, he shall receive a crown of life, which God hath promised to them that love him. |
| 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. |
| 14 | But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured. |
| 15 | Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death. |
| 16 | Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren. |
| 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. |
| 18 | For of his own will hath he begotten us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of his creatures. |
| 19 | You know, my dearest brethren. And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger. |
| 20 | For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God. |
| 21 | Wherefore casting away all uncleanness, and abundance of naughtiness, with meekness receive 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 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. |
| 24 | For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
