In this manner I beseech you to receive him, for though I could _enjoin_ you to do it, yet I had rather it should be a matter of your _own will_, than of _necessity_." It appears that the same _Onesimus_, when he was sent back, was no longer _a slave_, that he was a minister of the gospel, that he was joined with _Tychicus_ in an ecclesiastical commission to the church of the _Colossians_, and was afterwards bishop of _Ephesus_.

If language therefore has any meaning, and if history has recorded a fact which may be believed, there is no case more opposite to the doctrine of the _receivers_, than this which they produce in its support.
It is said again, that Christianity, among the many important precepts which it contains, does not furnish us with one for the abolition of slavery.

But the reason is obvious.

Slavery at the time of the introduction of the gospel was universally prevalent, and if Christianity had abruptly declared, that the millions of slaves should have been made free, who were then in the world, it would have been universally rejected, as containing doctrines that were dangerous, if not destructive, to society.

In order therefore that it might be universally received, it never meddled, by any positive precept, with the civil institutions of the times; but though it does not expressly say, that "you shall neither buy, nor sell, nor possess a slave," it is evident that, in its general tenour, it sufficiently militates against the custom.
The first doctrine which it inculcates, is that of _brotherly love_.