Note A — THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER NO 4. THE BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY. AN INQUIRY INTO THE PATRIARCHAL AND MOSAIC SYSTEMS ON THE SUBJECT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Fourth Edition—Enlarged.

: But, says the objector, if servants received their pay in advance, and if the Israelites were forbidden to surrender the fugitive to his master, it would operate practically as a bounty offered to all servants who would leave their master's service encouraging them to make contracts, get their pay in advance and then run away, thus cheating their masters out of their money as well as their own services.—We answer, the prohibition, Deut xxiii. 15. 16, "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master," &c., sets the servant free from his authority and of course, from all those liabilities of injury, to which as his servant, he was subjected, but not from the obligation of legal contracts. If the servant had received pay in advance, and had not rendered an equivalent for this "value received," he was not absolved from his obligation to do so, but he was absolved from all obligations to pay his master in that particular way, that is, by working for him as his servant.