Chapter 11

¹Would to God you could bear with some little of my folly: but do bear with me. ²For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. ³But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted, and fall from the simplicity that is in Christ. ⁴For if he that cometh preacheth another Christ, whom we have not preached; or if you receive another Spirit, whom you have not received; or another gospel which you have not received; you might well bear with him. ⁵For I suppose that I have done nothing less than the great apostles. ⁶For although I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but in all things we have been made manifest to you. ⁷Or did I commit a fault, humbling myself, that you might be exalted? Because I preached unto you the gospel of God freely? ⁸I have taken from other churches, receiving wages of them for your ministry. ⁹And, when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was wanting to me, the brethren supplied who came from Macedonia; and in all things I have kept myself from being burthensome to you, and so I will keep myself. ¹⁰The truth of Christ is in me, that this glorying shall not be broken off in me in the regions of Achaia. ¹¹Wherefore? Because I love you not? God knoweth it. ¹²But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off the occasion from them that desire occasion, that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we. ¹³For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. ¹⁴And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light. ¹⁵Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers be transformed as the ministers of justice, whose end shall be according to their works. ¹⁶I say again, (let no man think me to be foolish, otherwise take me as one foolish, that I also may glory a little.) ¹⁷That which I speak, I speak not according to God, but as it were in foolishness, in this matter of glorying. ¹⁸Seeing that many glory according to the flesh, I will glory also. ¹⁹For you gladly suffer the foolish; whereas yourselves are wise. ²⁰For you suffer if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take from you, if a man be lifted up, if a man strike you on the face. ²¹I speak according to dishonour, as if we had been weak in this part. Wherein if any man dare (I speak foolishly), I dare also. ²²They are Hebrews: so am I. They are Israelites: so am I. They are the seed of Abraham: so am I. ²³They are the ministers of Christ (I speak as one less wise): I am more; in many more labours, in prisons more frequently, in stripes above measure, in deaths often. ²⁴Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes, save one. ²⁵Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. ²⁶In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren. ²⁷In labour and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. ²⁸Besides those things which are without: my daily instance, the solicitude for all the churches. ²⁹Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire? ³⁰If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern my infirmity. ³¹The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever, knoweth that I lie not. ³²At Damascus, the governor of the nation under Aretas the king, guarded the city of the Damascenes, to apprehend me. ³³And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and so escaped his hands.