What do you wish? Am I to come to you with a rod, or in a loving and gentle spirit?

Get rid entirely of the old leaven, so that you may be like new dough-free from leaven, as in truth you are. For our Passover Lamb is already sacrificed-Christ himself;

With reference to the subjects about which you wrote to me: It would be well for a man to remain single.

If, however, a father thinks that he is not acting fairly by his unmarried daughter, when she is past her youth, and if under these circumstances her marriage ought to take place, let him act as he thinks right. He is doing nothing wrong-let the marriage take place.

On the other hand, a father, who has definitely made up his mind, and is under no compulsion, but is free to carry out his own wishes, and who has come to the decision, in his own mind, to keep his unmarried daughter at home will be doing right.

In short, the one who consents to his daughter's marriage is doing right, and yet the other will be doing better.

But take care that this right of yours does not become in any way a stumbling-block to the weak.

Have not we a right to food and drink?

Have not we a right to take a wife with us, if she is a Christian, as the other Apostles and the Master's brothers and Kephas all do?

Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to give up working for our bread?

If others share in this right over you, do not we even more? Still we did not avail ourselves of this right. No, we endure anything rather than impede the progress of the Good News of the Christ.

If, however, any one still thinks it right to contest the point-well, we have no such custom, nor have the Churches of God.