I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it : albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.
Ver. 19. Thou owest unto me, &c.] If Cleanthes gave himself to his master Socrates; if Alexander could say that he owed more to Aristotle that taught him than to Philip that begat him; if another could say that he could never discharge his debt to God, to his parents, and to his schoolmaster; how deeply then do men stand obliged to their spiritual fathers and teachers in Christ!
I will repay it] Philemon, though rich, is suspected to be somewhat too covetous, from this expression.
" O quam difficile est opibus non tradere mores;
Et cum tot Croesos viceris, esse Numam! "
Howbeit in both the Testaments we shall scarcely read of any godly man tainted with covetousness. Luther saith of himself, that though he otherwise had his flaws and frailties, yet the infection of covetousness never laid hold on him. Heu Germann illa bestia non curat aurum, said one of his adversaries, wiser than the rest, that would have stopped his mouth with money. But Seneca was naturally covetous, which he shrouds covertly in that sentence of his in his book de Tranquillitate, Nec aegroto nec valeo, I am neither sick nor well. It had been well for him if he could have said with that dying saint, My body is weak, my soul is well. As for those Epistles pretended to be written to him by St Paul, they are bastard and counterfeit, they savour not of his apostolic gravity and majesty, which shineth even in this to Philemon, being the least of all his Epistles. In those forged Epistles far higher matters are spoken of; but, alas, how coldly, how dryly and poorly! yet here behold a poor petty matter is set forth with that pithiness and powerfulness of speech, as is admirable. (Dyke.)