The Sable Cloud, page 189 by Nehemiah Adams
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anumit 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.
"'But how is it with slavery? God never forbade it; he recognized it; when He framed the Jewish code it was perfectly easy to exclude slavery; but hardly are the Ten Commandments out of his lips when He ordains slave-holding, gives particular directions about it, decrees that certain persons shall be an inheritance forever. Jesus Christ never uttered one word against slavery, though he did against polygamy; the Apostles have never written