unto me. The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with. It is iniquity. Even the solemn meeting, your new moons, and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth. These are an abomination unto me. I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." CHAPTER IV. ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF SLAVERY. Some time previous to my entering upon the present subject, a fragment of a pamphlet came into my hands, which had been designed for a defence of slavery, the titlepage of which was gone, and a considerable part of the work itself. I labored by inquiry in different directions to get one entire, but found it impossible; which led me to conclude that either by excessive reading it had become in a manner extinct, or else, through want of reading and neglect, it had become a prey to the moths, the moles, and the bats. In the part which fell into my hands, I found nothing worthy of notice, except three things, in pages sixteen and seventeen. ARGUMENT FIRST.-Our author asserts that the business of emancipation belongs to the legislative authority, but not to the church of God as such. ANSWER FIRST.-If the slaves were public property, or belonged to the commonwealth as such, the govern. ment might dispose of them at pleasure. Neither could the church or any other particular society take cognizance of their case more than that of enlisted soldiers, who are public property. But the slaves are not public property; they are recognized by the government, and by the laws of every slave state, as private property, as much as houses, lands, or cattle, that are lawfully purchased. Admitting that slaveholding was just, the legislature could have no more right to emancipate the slaves than they have a right to deprive any of the citizens of their houses, lands, or cattle. Therefore the business, if morally right, is a matter with which the legislature cannot interfere. If it is morally wrong, it is the business of the legislature to rectify that wrong, by establishing rules of justice throughout the community, to suppress the practice. It must also be the business of every member of the community, be. cause the people themselves are the government, and the members of the legislature are only their agents. There fore, as the people are the proper constituents of government, it is their place to take an active part, both by counsel, advice, example, and in electing representatives, to try to emancipate the slaves. ANSWER SECOND.-If the practice is wrong, the holders of slaves cannot retain them by force one day, without contracting guilt, so that if the legislature is in duty bound to suppress slavery, it must be because that slaveholders neglect their duty, and that neglect calls forth the exertion of the legislature, therefore the emancipation of slaves is first the business of the private possessors of them. That the churches of God are eminently concerned in the business of emancipation is manifest. 1st, Because Christians, through the light of the gospel and the influence of the Divine Spirit, are liable to have more correct ideas of the extent and spirituality of the moral law, and its obligations upon all ranks of society, than others; therefore their superior knowledge and experience lay them under peculiar obligations to use their best endeavors to have the slave emancipated. God's word testifies that to whom much is given, of them much is required. 2d. The church of God is forbidden to give that which is holy to the dogs, or to cast his pearls before swine. That is, to dispense the holy seals of his covenant, and grant other peculiar privileges of his house to such as are ignorant or scandalous. If slaveholding is sinful, it is so exceeding sinful that if any class of sinners may be compared to dogs or swine, slaveholders may. 3d. The church of Christ are bound, as faithful witnesses for Christ, and agents called to officiate in his name when they admit members to church fellowship, to make a difference between the clean and the unclean, and are forbidden to make the table of the Lord a table of devils, so that they are bound to take cognizance of every criminal act or practice as far as it may be known or persisted in. Neither ought the decisions of the legisla ture or of any civil court to have any influence over an ecclesiastical court respecting the terms of communion. If the church must be governed by the legislature in the admission or non-admission of slaveholders to fellowship, she may be governed by civil determinations in all matters of a moral kind, which would throw the whole power of ecclesiastical government into the hands of the civil authority, and make church officers to be mere tools of. civil power, and recognize civil government as head of the church; therefore the practice of slaveholding comes as directly under the special cognizance of church courts, as horse stealing or any other transgression of the moral law, and is as much more deserving of excommunication, as man stealing is worse than horse stealing. It appears that a more shocking declaration can hardly be imagined than that of our author. If slaveholding is lawful, it surely belongs to the church to justify it, and to pray for its support. If it is immoral, it belongs to the church to purge herself of so criminal a practice. But the doctrine inculcated by the author, is highly worthy of a slaveholder, whose station as such makes him head over all the concerns of his slaves, and all relations and relative duties, both civil and spiritual; and the same arguments which go to justify a slave-master in officiating as head over all the spiritual and temporal concerns of the slaves, will equally justify the civil authority in assuming headship over the church. ARG. 2. Page 18, our author grants "That the act of subjecting the Africans to perpetual servitude, was a violation of equity which ought to be observed by nations in their transactions with one another." In the same page, says he, "The principles of operation upon which the political machine is set in motion, may make things proper or improper, which would not be so should the course of the civil establishment be different." The sense of our author's words in this argument appears to be to this effect, that the Africans were unjustly subjected to slavery at first, but that the principles upon which our government is put into operation may make things proper or improper, which would not be so should the course of the civil establishment be different. When these declarations are applied to the subject of African slavery, they must mean, that as the civil establishment can make things lawful which were immoral before, so our government having sanctioned slavery by law has made it lawful, although it was in its nature immoral before. Answer. Slavery is so far from being any thing upon which or by which our political machine was set in motion that the reverse is manifest from the very foundation of the constitution. (See the Declaration of Independence, page 1st.) "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that amongst these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So that African slavery is so far from having a place in our political machine, or even from being a necessary production of it, that it is condemned by the Constitution, and is only permitted by the administration. Although laws have been passed to protect the citizens in holding slaves, yet no one is bound to either purchase slaves, or to hold them in possession; and although the civil authority did oblige the people to hold them it would be no reason why they should obey. Such a law, rather than the law of God, that forbids man-stealing under pain of death, it is a manifest conclusion from the author's words in the above citation; that the civil legislature of a nation has a power of changing the obligations of the moral law by making that to be just which the moral law condemns, and condemning that which it has made just, if a civil legislature has a right and power thus to invert the obligations of God's law in one case, it must have the same in all points of moral obligation. This is the doctrine of passive obedi. ence with a witness though the civil authority may pass unjust laws that may be innocently obeyed. But the matter of obedience in such cases, is in its nature indifferent; but none will imagine that the business of holding men in a state of unmerited, involuntary, hereditary bondage is a matter of indifference, but that it comes immedi ately under the obligation of the moral law to either jus tify or condemn it. ARG. 3. Page 23. "It is nonsense to say that those who use them as well as their bound condition of life will admit, deprive them of liberty. We cannot deprive a person of a thing of which he is not in possession. We find them in a state of privation; they may be used in this condition of servitude with full conformity to that summary of the divine law, do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." ANSWER. Our author asserts that we cannot deprive a person of a thing of which he is not in possession. This declaration is at variance with innumerable facts. For example-many a child is deprived of an estate which it never had in possession, but had a just right to possess; and many Africans are deprived of a right to freedom which they never had in possession. The ques tion at issue is not whether the African slaves ever possessed freedom, but whether they possess a right to be free; there is a right of freedom and a power of enjoying it. The Africans in a state of slavery have the same right to freedom with all mankind, but they possess not the power; for the power is on the side of the oppress. ors, while they have no comforter. For a people to lose the power of freedom, is no reason why they should lose their right to it, because it would suppose physical force to be the rule of human action; this would be the unavoidable consequence. If ever the Africans had a moral right to be free, and lost that right by physical force, it will suppose that it was first morally right for them to be free. But physical force has made it to be morally |