1 Peter 4:18

As if he had said, " When the day of visitation comes, which is verily at hand, and God shall begin to punish the Jews, his own people, called his house in the foregoing verse; if then the righteous among them escape the common calamity with great difficulty, and are scarcely preserved, how shall the ungodly and sinners think to escape unpunished in the day of Jerusalem's calamity, that day of vengeance, when Christ shall come to plead with them? If then the rightious be scarcely saved, that is, with great difficulty preserved from that desolating calamity, that fiery trial spoken of, 1 Peter 4:12, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? And how shall they hope to escape in safety from that dreadful judgment now ready to come on the Jewish nation?"

There have been those that have made use of this text to show the difficulty of eternal salvation; and that the best and holiest of saints, even those that are most eminent in grace, are very difficultly saved; which, though. truth in itself, yet is scarcely deducible from this text, which certainly speaks of temporal preservation.