As surely as God can be relied on, there has been no equivocation about our message to you.

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.

But I will tell you what I think about it. For this is the best way to deal with you, for you were the first not only to do anything about this, but to want to do anything, and that was last year.

It is really unnecessary for me to write to you about this fund for your fellow-Christians,

But let the man who boasts, boast about the Lord.

I feel a divine jealousy about you, for I betrothed you to Christ, to present you as a pure bride to her one husband.

And besides everything else, the thing that burdens me every day is my anxiety about all the churches.

On this man's account I am ready to boast, but about myself I will boast only of my weaknesses.

Three times I have prayed to the Lord about this, begging that it might leave me,

But granting that I did not burden you myself, I was clever about it, you say, and took you in by a trick.