In support of Slavery, it is the habit to pervert texts and to invent authority. Even St. Paul is vouched for a wrong which his Christian life rebukes. Much stress is now laid on his example, as it appears in the Epistle to Philemon, written at Rome, and sent by Onesimus, a servant. From the single chapter constituting the entire epistle I take the following ten verses, most strangely invoked for Slavery. “_I beseech thee for my son Onesimus_, whom I have begotten in my bonds; which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me; whom I have sent again. Thou, therefore, receive him, that is, mine own bowels: whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel; but without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him forever; _not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved_, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord! _If thou count me, therefore, a partner, receive him as myself._ If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account: I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.”[10] Out of this affectionate epistle, where St. Paul calls the converted servant, Onesimus, his _son_, precisely as in another epistle he calls Timothy his son, Slavery is elaborately vindicated, and the great Apostle to the Gentiles made the very tutelary saint of the Slave-Hunter. Now, without invoking his real judgment of Slavery from his condemnation on another occasion of “men-stealers,” or what I prefer to call _slave-hunters_, in company with “murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers,” and without undertaking to show that the present epistle, when truly interpreted, is a protest against Slavery and a voice for Freedom,--all of which might be done,--I content myself with calling attention to two things, apparent on its face, and in themselves an all-sufficient response. _First_, while it appears that Onesimus had been in some way the servant of Philemon, it does not appear that he was ever held as _chattel_; and how gross and monstrous is the effort to derive such a wrong out of words, whether in the Constitution of our country or in the Bible, which do not explicitly, unequivocally, and exclusively define this wrong! _Secondly_, in charging Onesimus with this epistle to Philemon, the Apostle recommends him as “not now a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved,” and he enjoins upon his correspondent the hospitality due to a freeman, saying expressly, “If thou count me, therefore, a partner, _receive him as myself_”: ay, Sir, not as slave, not even as servant, but as