and in this confidence I would fain get away from the body and reside with the Lord.

Therefore henceforth I know no one simply as a man??ven if I have known Christ as a man, yet now I do so no longer.

We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.

Yet have I sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this behalf; that, as I said, ye may be ready:

We overthrow [vain] reasonings and every lofty idea raised against the knowledge of God [i.e., as revealed through the Gospel], and take captive [our] every thought to [make it] obey Christ.

No, I intend to go on as I am doing, in order to checkmate those who would fain make out that in the apostolate of which they boast they work on the same terms as I do.

I say it again, let no man think me vain; but if they do, yet as such, bear with me, that I too may applaud my self a little.

as if I was inferior to them. but whatever they pretend to, (I must be so vain) I pretend to the like.

I know a Christian man who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body I know not, or out of the body, I know not. God knows), was caught up??his man of whom I speak??ven into the third heaven.

Am I become vain? 'tis you have forc'd me to it: for I ought to have been commended by you: since I am not inferior to the chiefest of the apostles, tho' in myself I am nothing.