‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Are you one of us?’
Onesimus sadly shook his head. ‘Perhaps I was, or might have been, a Christian once.’
‘Have you been illuminated and fallen away, unhappy one?’
‘Ask me no more,’ said Onesimus. ‘I am a lost wretch.’
‘The Good Shepherd,’ said Hermas, ‘came to seek and save the lost.’
‘It[T9] is vain to talk to me,’ said Onesimus. ‘Tell me of yourself. You are not a criminal, or a madman, or a barbarian, like these.’
‘Talk not of them with scorn,’ said Hermas. ‘Are they worse than the harlots and sinners whose friend Christ was?’
Onesimus would not talk of Christ. ‘I never saw you,’ he said, ‘in Cæsar’s household.’
‘No,’ said Hermas; ‘I was the slave of Pedanius Secundus, the city Præfect. He has no rustic prison, and, being a friend of Nero, he asked his freedman to get leave to send me here.’
‘But why?’