19. “We know,” i.e., we Apostles know, “that we are of God,” i.e., that we, and all good Christians, are born of God; and hence, safe from sin, and out of the reach of the fraud and violence of the devil, as long as we preserve in ourselves this heavenly seed of sanctifying grace, “and the whole world,” i.e., all the rest of mankind, lovers of the world and of earthly pleasures, solely influenced by its leading corrupt maxims, viz., “the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes,”