1 Peter 2:18

Servants, be subject to your masters The counsels thus opening are carried on to the close of the chapter. The fulness with which slaves are thus addressed, here and in Ephesians 6:5-8, Col 3:22, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, indicates the large proportion of converts that belonged to that class. Nearly all the names in Romans 16 and many of those of other members of the Church are found in the Columbariaor Catacombsof Rome as belonging to slaves or freedmen. The term for "servants," here and in Luke 16:13; Acts 10:7; Romans 14:4, differs from the more common word as pointing specially to household servants, the "domestics" of a family. It may have been chosen by St Peter as including the wide class of libertinior freedmen and freedwomen who, though no longer in the statusof slavery, were still largely employed in the households of the upper classes, as scribes, musicians, teachers, physicians, needle-women and the like. It is obvious that the new thoughts of converts to the faith of Christ must have brought with them some peculiar dangers. They had learnt that all men were equal in the sight of God. Might they not be tempted to assert that equality in word or act? They felt themselves raised to a higher life than their heathen masters. Could they endure to serve loyally and humbly those whom they looked on as doomed to an inevitable perdition? Was it not their chief duty to escape by flight or purchase from the degradation and dangers of their position? The teaching of St Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:21-23, as well as in the passages above referred to, shews how strongly he felt the urgency of this danger. Cardinal Wiseman's Fabiolamay be mentioned as giving, with special vividness and insight, a picture of this aspect of the social life of the early Church.

with all fear So St Paul urges obedience "with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5). There was, looking to the then existing relations of society, a comparative nobleness in a service into which the fear of offending their master, as distinct from the mere dread of the scourge or other punishment, entered as a motive into the obedience of slaves. And this was not to depend on the character of the master. He might be good and easy-going, or perverse and irritable. Their duty was in either case to submit, with thankfulness in the one case, with a cheerful patience in the other.