Why, I felt in my heart that the end must be death. That was to keep me from relying on myself instead of on God, who can even raise the dead.

For if I hurt your feelings, who is there to cheer me up but the man whose feelings I hurt?

This is what I said in my letter, so that I might avoid coming and having my feelings hurt by the very people who might have been expected to make me happy, for I felt sure about you all, that what made me happy would make you all happy.

For I was in great trouble and distress of mind when I wrote you, and I shed many tears as I did it, yet it was not to hurt your feelings, but to make you realize the extraordinary affection I have for you.

But if anyone has hurt anybody's feelings, it is not so much mine, as yours, or at least those of some of you, not to be too hard upon you all.

You are my recommendations, written on my heart, for everybody to read and understand.

You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by me, written not in ink, but in the Spirit of the living God, and not on tablets of stone, but on the human heart.

So since by the mercy of God I am engaged in this service, I never lose heart.

For God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in my heart, to give me the light of the knowledge of God's glory, that is on the face of Christ.

I am hard pressed on every side, but never cut off: perplexed, but not driven to despair;

So I never lose heart. Though my outer nature is wasting away, my inner is being renewed every day.

I am not trying to recommend myself to you again. I am giving you cause to be proud of me, to use in answering men who pride themselves on external advantages and not on sincerity of heart.

I have kept nothing back from you, men of Corinth; I have opened my heart to you.

I do not mean this as a reflection upon you, for as I said before, you will always have a place in my heart whether I live or die.

For even if I did hurt your feelings with that letter, I cannot regret it; even if I did regret it, when I saw that the letter had hurt your feelings perhaps for a while,

I am glad of it now; not because you had your feelings hurt, but because having them hurt led you to repent, for you took it as God meant you to do, so that you should not lose anything at all through me.

His heart goes out all the more to you, as he recalls how you all obeyed him, and with what reverence and trembling you received him.

I do not mean to be easy upon others and hard upon you,

Thank God, he puts the same devotion to you that I feel into Titus' heart,

Who is weak without my being weak? Whose conscience is hurt without my being fired with indignation?

And I know that this man?? do not know whether it was in the body or out of it, God knows??4 was caught up into Paradise, and heard things that must not be told, which no human being can repeat.