I know, of course, your willingness to help, and I am always boasting of it to the Macedonians. I tell them that you in Greece have been ready for a year past; and it was really your zeal that stimulated most of them.

I do not regard myself as in any way inferior to the most eminent Apostles!

But his reply has been-- 'My help is enough for you; for my strength attains its perfection in the midst of weakness.' Most gladly, then, will I boast all the more of my weaknesses, so that the strength of the Christ may overshadow me.

I have been "playing the fool!" It is you who drove me to it. For it is you who ought to have been commending me! Although I am nobody, in no respect did I prove inferior to the most eminent Apostles.

For my part, I will most gladly spend, and be spent, for your welfare. Can it be that the more intensely I love you the less I am to be loved?