On December 13, 1706, Mather believed wholeheartedly that God had rewarded him for writing The Negro Christianized. Members of Mather’s church—“without any Application of mine to them for such a Thing”—spent forty or fifty pounds on “a very likely Slave,” he happily noted in his diary. New England churches routinely gifted captives to ministers. Mather named “it” Onesimus, after St. Paul’s adopted son, a converted runaway. Mather kept a close racist eye on Onesimus, constantly suspecting him of thievery.8
