1. None whatever — and yet bear with me a little my brethren. Endure a little foolish boasting on my part.
2-4. The spirit of our profession is forbearance and gentleness. Then bear with me a little, as if I too were numbered amongst those of the world who approve themselves. Are you not only too ready to bear with it and to give ear and endure, when others recount their wonderful demonstrations and marks of apostleship, and listen to them even when it is another Jesus they preach, a different spirit which you are receiving, and not the same gospel that I gave you — do you not still bear with them, and even rather enjoy the catalogues they give you of their sufferings, and adventures, of their visions and revelations, all in proof of the doctrine they bring? Then listen also to me, bear also with me awhile, for I am jealous over you, moved towards you, as it were, with the divine jealousy. I betrothed you to one husband, presenting you to the Christ as unsullied and virgin in the faith, and now I fear lest the reasonings of the Serpent intervene and take captive your minds as they did Eve's, and adulterate your purity and your simple hold on the Christ. Let me then recommend myself awhile,
5. and show myself not a whit behind even the most unmistakeable “apostle” of them all.
6. Even though my speech be not remarkable, my knowledge is above question, and you all of you know all about me, I have kept nothing back.
7. But the very things which I did specially for your sake they wrest to their own point of view, and bring against me — that you never paid me a salary, never kept me out of your funds,
16-18. Call me then foolish, if I boast, but hear me for once whilst I enumerate my own deeds in the apostleship and like them boast of my extreme spirituality and the privileges and powers conferred on me by God. I speak as a fool, and not according to the Lord. Yet hear me.
26-28. I have journeyed far afield, and the dangers I might enumerate would far out-distance the adventures they have suffered. In the field or the city, by land or by sea, by river or in the haunts of brigands I have run countless risks, and at the hands of my own nation, or amongst foreign nations and cities, at the hands of false brethren too and traitors, I have passed through grave trials. Oh I have been an apostle above measure! What signs of martyrdom and crucifixion that they produce can I not parallel from my own experience, and indeed outmatch and vanquish altogether — in watchings, hunger, thirst, fasting, cold and nakedness; not to mention this daily anxiety for all the churches.
32-33. At Damascus they let me down from the city wall in a basket when the Governor was clamouring for my arrest and capture, and so the tale of my adventures continues. I will boast if they boast. It seems that I must say something to my own credit, something to offset their own credentials, and magnify my own office and person as a spiritual leader.