Book of Common Prayer

¹² Our assurance is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in sincerity and godly purity, and not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God we have conducted ourselves in the world, and most of all toward you. ¹³ We write no other things to you than what you read and also know. Yea and I trust you will find us to the end ¹⁴ just as you have found us so far. For we are your delight and joy, even as you are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.

¹⁵ And in this confidence I was minded the other time to have gone to you, so that you might have had yet one pleasure more, ¹⁶ and to have passed by you on the way to Macedonia, and to have come again out of Macedonia to you, and to have been led on my way toward Judea by you. ¹⁷ When I was so minded, was it lightly? Or do I think carnally the things that I think, such that with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay?

¹⁸ God is faithful. For our preaching to you was not yea and nay. ¹⁹ For God’s Son Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us (that is to say, by me and Silvanus and Timothy) was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. ²⁰ For all the promises of God in him are yea, and are in him Amen, to the laud of God through us. ²¹ For it is God who established us and you in Christ, and has anointed us; ²² who has also sealed us, and has given the earnest of the Spirit into our hearts.

¹³ You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost her saltness, what can be salted with it? It is thereafter good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot by men.

¹⁴ You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light to all who are in the house. ¹⁶ Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

¹⁷ Do not think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. No, I have not come to destroy them, but to fulfil them. ¹⁸ For truly I say to you, till heaven and earth perish, not one jot or one tittle of the law shall escape, till all be fulfilled. ¹⁹ Whosoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, he will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever observes and teaches them, the same will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.