It may be well, in concluding this point, to notice the plea that Christians were required by the apostles to render not only patience and submission to the Emperor Nero, but also allegiance and hearty obedience. Yet none will say that Nero was a righteous ruler. We reply, the case is precisely in our favour: for it proves the proposition exactly parallel to ours, that civil government is a lawful institution, notwithstanding it is abused. The government of the Cæsars was providentially the _de facto_ one, and Nero, bad as he was, its recognized head. As such, all his magisterial acts which were not specifically contrary to God's law, were legitimate, and were the proper objects of the civic obedience of the Christian subject. Otherwise, the apostles would never have exacted it for him. The instance does imply, therefore, that civil government is a lawful relation; and this is precisely what we infer from the parallel instances of obedience enjoined on servants to masters. If Abolitionists are not willing to argue that the relation of ruler and subject is sin _per se_, notwithstanding the obedience required to Nero, they cannot argue from their proposed analogy between Nero's cruelties and slaveholding. But an equally conclusive reply is, that apostles never admitted a Nero, with his barbarities in full sway, to the same communion-table with his patient Christian victims, commanding the latter to forbear as towards a wrongdoer, and yet failing to give him the correlative command, to cease the wrong-doing. § 8. _Philemon and Onesimus._