"'If the case were clear and beyond doubt, I am not sure that he would,' said Theodotus. 'While he would not counsel Onesimus to run away, yet I can only say, that, fleeing from certain cruelty and death, I doubt if he would have been remanded. But Paul told servants to be "subject to their masters," "not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward." He speaks to them of "suffering wrongfully;" of "doing well, and suffering for it;" and he refers the suffering slave to Christ, "who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not." Moreover, he says: "For even hereunto were ye called; because Christ also _suffered for us_, leaving us an example that ye should _follow his steps_." That is certainly death.' "'If Paul did not send Onesimus back to Philemon, however, it would not be because it was wrong, in his view, for Philemon to hold him in bondage; please observe this distinction; but, judging the case by itself, he would decide whether the slave ought not, under the circumstances, to have the right of asylum,--Paul himself having once been "let down by a basket," to escape from the Damascenes. Paul and any other man would, in certain cases, protect even a fugitive son or daughter from a father; and this consistently with his recognition of the parental and filial relation. "'Let me remind my brother, and you, my pastor, and my brethren, of one fact which occurs to me at the moment. Manslayers, in cities of refuge, were to go free at the death of the High Priest then in office; no such release, however, was granted to the Gentile slaves, showing that slavery was not a crime in the estimation of the Most High. Otherwise, He would have legislated for the departure of slaves from their Hebrew masters, as He did for manslayers fleeing from the avenger of blood. Excuse the digression. The thought struck me at the moment.' "'I put it to the brother,' said the Laodicean, 'whether he himself would not flee to Rome, were he a single man, if he should be made a slave to that monster in human shape, Osander of Hieropolis?'