Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful ways. We do not use trickery or pervert God's word. By clear statements of the truth we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience before God.

See what great earnestness godly sorrow has produced in you! How ready you are to clear yourselves, how indignant, how alarmed, how full of longing and enthusiasm, how eager to seek justice! In every way you have demonstrated that you are innocent in this matter.

So, even though I wrote to you, it wasn't because of the man who did the wrong or because of the man who was hurt. Instead, I wrote to you so that your devotion to us might be made perfectly clear to you before God.

Even though I may be untrained as an orator, I am not so in the field of knowledge. We have made this clear to all of you in every possible way.