“’Now, let us suppose what would happen if, departing from the rule and example of Paul, we follow the counsels of our good brother from Laodicea.  The community would be in constant excitement by the departure of servants asserting each his natural liberty; laws would become rigid; hardships would be multiplied; cruelties would be perpetuated; insurrections would become frequent; sacrifices of servants, the innocent with the guilty, would be made to deter from insubordination.  Instead of the spirit of the Gospel in our dwellings, alienations, suspicion, jealousy, wrangling, strife, and every form of evil would prevail.  He is no real friend of servant or master who would enforce the principles of our Laodicean brother.  I adhere to the Apostle.  If questioned as to my right to hold Onesimus in bondage, the answer immediately suggested is that an inspired Apostle sanctions it in my case.  If right in my case, it is right in principle; for if slave-holding be a violation of rights, I am guilty of that violation, however humane a master I may be.  The Apostle does not reprove me, nor require me to manumit Onesimus, but tells me that I now receive him “forever,” and he teaches me how to treat him.  I could occupy your time by arguing the abstract question relating to property in the services of men,—­but I rest my case for the present on the letter of Paul the Apostle, brought to me by the hand of my fugitive servant, returning to what the laws call his bonds.

“’Let me add a few words, however, on the general subject, to the argument of Theodotus.

“’Our good brother from Laodicea tells us that slavery and polygamy are “twin barbarisms.”  He argues that slavery was winked at, like polygamy; was “suffered,” by the Most High.  But I propose to refute this, and I will throw myself on your candor to judge if I succeed.

“’God, in Eden, appointed the marriage of one man and one woman to be the law of matrimony.  “And wherefore one?” says the prophet.  “He had the residue of the spirit,” and could have ordained otherwise.  “Wherefore one?” The answer is, “that he might seek a godly seed.”  The arrangement was for the highest elevation of the race.

“’Polygamy is in direct conflict with the ordinance of God.  Of course God never ordained it.  On the contrary, the appointment in Eden was equivalent to a prohibitory act, which Jesus Christ revived, forbidding polygamy, and the Apostles have enjoined upon us that we observe the law of marriage as given in paradise.

“’So much for polygamy.  God never recognized it.  The edict requiring the marriage of a childless widow to the brother of her husband, takes it for granted that a man would leave but one widow.