So I have thought it necessary to urge these brothers to visit you ahead of me and get your promised love-offering ready beforehand, so as to have it ready as a real love-offering, not as one grasped and grudgingly given.

If a man is ready and willing to give, his gift is acceptable in accordance with what he has, not with what he does not have.

for I know your readiness to help in it. I am boasting of you about it to the Macedonians, reminding them that Greece has been ready since last year, and your enthusiasm has stimulated the most of them.

But I send the brothers that in this matter my boasting of you may not turn out to be an idle boasting, that you all may be ready, as I have told them you will be,

to keep me -- not to mention you -- from being humiliated for having such confidence in you, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready.

It is now the third time that I have been ready to come to see you, and I will never ask you for financial support, for it is not your money but you yourselves that I want; for children are not by duty bound to lay up money for their parents, but parents for their children.