Chapter 3

  Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some [others], epistles of commendation to you, or [letters] of commendation from you?  

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  Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:  

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  [Forasmuch as ye are] manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.  

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  And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward:  

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  Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency [is] of God;  

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  Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.  

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  But if the ministration of death, written [and] engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which [glory] was to be done away:  

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  How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?  

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  For if the ministration of condemnation [be] glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.  

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  For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.  

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  For if that which is done away [was] glorious, much more that which remaineth [is] glorious.  

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  Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:  

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  And not as Moses, [which] put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:  

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  But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which [vail] is done away in Christ.  

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  But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.  

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  Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.  

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  Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord [is], there [is] liberty.  

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  But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, [even] as by the Spirit of the Lord.  

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