iii. 22.) Had not Peter
written, 'Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to
the good and gentle, but also to the froward'? (1 Pet. ii. 18.) Onesimus
had broken these commandments when he fled from his master. Was it not
then of my responsibility to send him again to Philemon? And was it not
Christ's law to him to return and submit himself under his master's hand?
"Why, then, hast thou not understood my speech? Has it been even because
thou couldst not _hear_ my word? What else has hindered? What more could I
have said, than (in 1 Tim. vi. 1-5) I do say, to rebuke all abolitionists?
Yea, I describe them--I show their principles--as fully as if I had called
them by name in Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia, and said they would
live in 1857.
"And yet thou hast, in thy commentary on my letter to Timothy, utterly
distorted, maimed, and falsified my meaning. Thou hast mingled truth and
untruth so together as to make me say what was not and is not in my mind.
For thou teachest the slave, while professing not so to teach him, that I
tell him that he is _not_ to count his master worthy of all honor; that he
_is_ to _despise_ him; that he is _not_ to do him service as to a
Christian faithful and beloved. _No_. But thou teachest the slave, in my
name, to regard his Christian master an _offender_ in the sight of
Christ, if he _continues_ a slave-owner.
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