I say to my reproach that we were too weak for that. But whenever anyone is bold (I speak foolishly), I am bold also.
“For his letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.”
I would to God you could bear with me a little in my folly. Indeed, bear with me.
What I speak, I speak not according to the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting.
Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should be sharp, according to the authority which the Lord has given me for edification and not for destruction.
by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true;