Verse 18.— For when they speak great swelling words. The sense is that these wicked ones used words utterly devoid of any knowledge of divine things. Their speech was in great flowing, high-sounding words, claiming an illumi­nation they did not possess; words of falsehood calculated to allure those by lusts of the flesh and lasciviousness that had theretofore escaped from such practices. They hoped thereby to seduce those who at one time lived with them in the indulgence in all these evils. It was an effort to cause to arise in rebellion passions held under restraint in obe­dience to the precepts of the gospel of Christ— an attack led by the enemy of souls against the supposed weakest point of the Christian citadel.