but to Christ. "Confident of your obedience." He says, I have not written to you in a commanding manner, nor behaving with obstinacy, but trusting in your obedience. What iron heart would these words not soften? "Knowing that you will do even more than I say." He says this, persuading him by all means to receive Onesimus, if for no other reason, then at least so as not to destroy the high opinion which the Apostle had conceived of him. "At the same time also, prepare a lodging for me." I did not write only on account of Onesimus, he says (for Philemon might have said, if it were not for him, you would not even have deemed me worthy of a word), but I also wrote for this reason, he says, that you might prepare a lodging for me. For he was also bound to be afraid, if he did not receive Onesimus, that the Apostle would arrive and he would be exposed for having been disobedient. "Through your prayers." Great, indeed, is the power of prayers, but great also is the humility of Paul, that he stood in need of their prayers. "Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner." This man had been sent by the Colossians to Paul, so that it is manifest that Philemon was from Colossae. He calls him a fellow-prisoner, showing that he too was in great affliction. Furthermore, he puts him to shame; if Epaphras was a fellow-prisoner with him, but he himself would not even grant the favor of receiving Onesimus to one who was held captive for the Lord's sake. "Aristarchus, Demas." Concerning him he wrote to Timothy: "Demas has forsaken me." They say that this Demas returned to the worship of the Gentiles and became a priest of idols. And if that Epistle was earlier, he later repented; but if it was later, he became afterwards sluggish and slothful. "Luke." He who was last has become first. For in the second to Timothy he says, "Luke alone is with me." He calls them co-workers, showing that these men also, he says, join with me in entreating you. B The end, by divine favor, of the Epistle to Philemon. Written from the city of Rome by Onesimus, a servant. C
ARGUMENT TO THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS
D He writes this from Italy. The occasion of the Epistle was as follows: Since the Jews were insisting upon the law and the shadowy figures, for this reason the apostle Paul, having become the teacher of the Gentiles and having been sent to the nations, was preaching the Gospel; and whereas for all the nations