008:012 Moreover when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak consciences, you are, in reality, sinning against Christ. 008:013 Therefore if what I eat causes my brother to fall, never again to the end of my days will I touch any kind of animal food, for fear I should cause my brother to fall. 009:001 Am I not free? Am I not an Apostle? Can it be denied that I have seen Jesus, our Lord? Are not you yourselves my work in the Lord? 009:002 If to other men I am not an Apostle, yet at any rate I am one to you; for your very existence as a Christian Church is the seal of my Apostleship. 009:003 That is how I vindicate myself to those who criticize me. 009:004 Have we not a right to claim food and drink? 009:005 Have we not a right to take with us on our journeys a Christian sister as our wife, as the rest of the Apostles do-- and the Lord's brothers and Peter? 009:006 Or again, is it only Barnabas and myself who are not at liberty to give up working with our hands? 009:007 What soldier ever serves at his own cost? Who plants a vineyard and yet does not eat any of the grapes? Or who tends a herd of cattle and yet does not taste their milk? 009:008 Am I making use of merely worldly illustrations? Does not the Law speak in the same tone? 009:009 For in the Law of Moses it is written, "Thou shalt not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." 009:010 Is God simply thinking about the oxen? Or is it really in our interest that He speaks? Of course, it was written in our interest, because it is His will that when a plough-man ploughs, and a thresher threshes, it should be in the hope of sharing that which comes as the result. 009:011 If it is we who sowed the spiritual grain in you, is it a great thing that we should reap a temporal harvest from you? 009:012 If other teachers possess that right over you, do not we possess it much more? Yet we have not availed ourselves of the right, but we patiently endure all things rather than hinder in the least degree the progress of the Good News of the Christ. 009:013 Do you not know that those who perform the sacred rites have their food from the sacred place, and that those who serve at the altar all alike share with the altar? 009:014 In the same way the Lord also directed those who proclaim the Good News to maintain themselves by the Good News. 009:015 But I, for my part, have not used, and do not use, my full rights in any of these things. Nor do I now write with that object so far as I myself am concerned, for I would rather die than have anybody make this boast of mine an empty one.