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¹ Do we begin again to show you who we are? Or do we, like others, need that letters recommendatory of us should be written to you? Or, that ye should write recommendations of us?² Ye are our epistle, written on our hearts, and known and read by every man.³ For ye know that ye are an epistle of the Messiah, ministered by us; not written with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on the tablets of the heart of flesh.⁴ And such confidence have we in the Messiah towards God.⁵ Not that we are sufficient to think any thing as of ourselves; but our efficiency is from God:

⁶ who hath fitted us to be ministers of the new Testament, not in the letter, but in the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.⁷ Now if the ministration of death was engraved upon stones in writing, and was so glorious that the children of Israel could not look on the face of Moses, on account of the glory upon his face which vanished away;⁸ how then shall not the ministration of the Spirit be still more glorious?⁹ For if there was glory in the ministration of condemnation, how much more shall the ministration of justification excel in glory?¹⁰ For that which was glorious, was as if not glorious, in comparison with this which excelleth in glory.¹¹ For if that which is abolished was glorious, much more must that which abideth be glorious.

¹² Seeing therefore we have this hope, we the more speak with boldness;¹³ and are not like Moses, who threw a vail over his face, that the children of Israel might not behold the termination of that which was abolished.¹⁴ 14 But they were blinded in their understanding; for until this day, when the old Testament is read, the same vail resteth upon them; nor is it manifest [fn] , that it is abolished by the Messiah. ¹⁵ And unto this day, when Moses is read, a vail is thrown upon their hearts.¹⁶ But when any of them is turned unto the Lord, the vail is taken from him.¹⁷ Now the Lord himself is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.¹⁸ And we all, with uncovered faces, behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord; and are transformed into the same likeness, from glory to glory, as by the Lord the Spirit.