12 ¹¹ I AM BEING VERY FOOLISH, but it was you who drove me to it; my credentials should have come from you. In no respect did I fall short of these superlative apostles, even if I am a nobody. 12 ¹² The marks of a true apostle were there, in the work I did among you, which called for such constant fortitude, and was attended by signs, marvels, and miracles. 12 ¹³ Is there anything in which you were treated worse than the other congregations-except this, that I never sponged upon you? How unfair of me! I crave forgiveness.

12 ¹⁴ Here am I preparing to pay you a third visit; and I am not going to sponge upon you. It is you I want, not your money; parents should make provision for their children, not children for their parents. 12 ¹⁵ As for me, I will gladly spend what I have for you—yes, and spend myself to the limit. If I love you overmuch, am I to be loved the less? 12 ¹⁶ But, granted that I did not prove a burden to you, still I was unscrupulous enough, you say, to use a trick to catch you. 12 ¹⁷ Who, of the men I have sent to you, was used by me to defraud you? 12 ¹⁸ I begged Titus to visit you, and I sent our friend is with him. Did Titus defraud you? Have we not both been guided by the same Spirit, and followed the same course?

12 ¹⁹ Perhaps you think that all this time we have been addressing our defence to you. No; we are speaking in God's sight, and as Christian men. Our whole aim, my own dear people, is to build you up. 12 ²⁰ I fear that when I come I may perhaps find you different from what I wish you to be, and that you may find me also different from what you wish. I fear I may find quarrelling and jealousy, angry tempers and personal rivalries, backbiting and gossip, arrogance and general disorder. 12 ²¹ I am afraid that, when I come again, my God may humiliate me in your presence, that I may have tears to shed over many of those who have sinned in the past and have not repented of their unclean lives, their fornication and sensuality.