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¹ I wish ye would bear a little with my folly; yea, bear with me.² For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy; for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.³ But I fear lest as the serpent deceived Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from simplicity toward Christ.⁴ If indeed he that cometh preach another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another Spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

⁵ But I suppose that I fall nothing short of the very chief apostles.⁶ For if I am unskilful in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly manifest to you in all things.⁷ Have I committed an offence in humbling myself, that ye might be exalted, because I have preached the gospel of God to you at free cost?⁸ I spoiled other churches, taking wages of them, to serve you: and when I was present with you and wanted, I was chargeable to no man.⁹ For the brethren who came from Macedonia supplied my want; and I have in all things kept myself from being burdensom, and will keep myself.¹⁰ As the truth of Christ is in me, this my boasting shall not be stopped in the regions of Achaia.¹¹ Wherefore?¹² Because I love you not? God knoweth. But what I do, I will do, that I may cut off the occasion from them who desire occasion, that wherein they boast, they may be found even as we.¹³ For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.¹⁴ And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.¹⁵ Therefore it is no great thing, if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose ends shall be according to their works.

¹⁶ I say again, Let no man think me a fool; but if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I also may boast a little.¹⁷ What I speak, I speak not after the Lord; but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting.¹⁸ Seeing many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.¹⁹ For ye, being wise, suffer fools willingly. For ye suffer, if a man inslave you,²⁰ if he devour you, if he take from you, if he exalt himself, if he smite you on the face.²¹ I speak with regard to reproach, as though we had been weak: whereas in whatever any is confident, (I speak as a fool) I am confident also.

²² Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I.²³ Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak foolishly) I more: in labours more abundantly, in stripes more exceedingly, in prisons more abundantly, in deaths often.²⁴ Five times I received from the Jews forty stripes save one.²⁵ Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I have been shipwrecked, a day and a night I passed in the deep: In journeyings often,²⁶ in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own countrymen, in dangers from the heathen; in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers in the sea, in dangers among false brethren:²⁷ In labour and toil, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.²⁸ Beside the things which are from without, that which rusheth upon me daily, the care of all the churches.²⁹ Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?³⁰ Since I must glory, I will glory of the things that concern my infirmities.³¹ The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever, knoweth that I lie not.³² In Damascus the governor under king Aretas, kept the city of the Damascenes with a guard, being determined to apprehend me.³³ But I was let down through a window in a basket by the wall, and escaped from his hands.