2 Corinthians 12:11-21

(11) I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing. (12) Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. (13) For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? forgive me this wrong. (14) Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. (15) And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. (16) But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile. (17) Did I make a gain of you by any of them whom I sent unto you? (18) I desired Titus, and with him I sent a brother. Did Titus make a gain of you? walked we not in the same spirit? walked we not in the same steps? (19) Again, think ye that we excuse ourselves unto you? we speak before God in Christ: but we do all things, dearly beloved, for your edifying. (20) For I fear, lest when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults: (21) And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.

I have already observed, that everything as relating to the Apostle's person, hath been, as much as could be, avoided enlarging upon. The Church of Corinth, (of whose infirmities and unkindness to him Paul complained,) and Paul himself, (with all those complaints,) have long since ceased. Our improvements of those sweet scriptures, are to be directed to such parts of them as are detached from all matters of a private, transient nature, and are of public and everlasting usefulness its the Church of Christ. And these are very sweet and precious. It will be our mercy to be looking unto the Spirit for grace, while perusing those holy records concerning the Church, that the improvements the Lord intended for them may not be overlooked by us, but that Christ's grace to us, as it was to the Apostle, may be suited in all departments, and with all-sufficiency, that we may find cause, as Paul did, to give Jesus all the glory, when his strength is made perfect in our weakness, and we find more strength' in the Lord, when discovering greater weakness in ourselves.