Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.

But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am;

I suppose therefore that this is good because of the present necessity; that it is good for a man to be thus:

And this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction.

Now concerning virgins: I have no commandment from the Lord; yet I give judgment as one who, having received mercy from the Lord, is faithful.

Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?

My defense to those who examine me is this:

Or did the Word of God go forth from you? Or did it come only to you?

If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.

For even if I should boast somewhat more about our authority, which the Lord gave us for edification and not for your destruction, I shall not be ashamed;

For his letters, they say, are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.

I have become foolish in boasting; you have compelled me. For I ought to have been commended by you; for in nothing was I inferior to the most eminent apostles, though I am nothing.

Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.

and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you,

as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the unlearned and unstable twist, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.