A
NORTHERN PRESBYTEPt'S
SECOND LETTER
TO
OF THE GOSPEL
ALL DENOMINATIONS
SLAVERY.
BY
NATHAN LORD, D
PRESIDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
1855.
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MINISTERS
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE:
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS.
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L E T T E R.
A  NORTHERN PRESBYTER addresses this second letter
to his brethren, of all denominations, on slavery. His
former letter appears not to have been generally ac ceptable.   It has been sharply criticized in many
religious and secular journals. A leading representa tive Quarterly - THE NEw  ENGLANDER -  calls down
upon the writer the censure of the church, and, sub sequently, undertakes to set forth, at laxge, his alleged
errors, and raise the note of warning against their
pernicious influence.   Presbyter proposes  in these
pages to justify what he has before written.   He
presumes to question the wisdom of his reviewers;
: and hopes to substantiate, by additional reasonings,
his original positions. Whether what he now writes
will be more convincing or acceptable, he has no
concern to inquire. It is in his mind to write it, and
he leaves it to produce whatever results it may
please an infinitely wise Providence to appoint.
Presbyter's former letter was written in a full knowl
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edge of what the NEw ENGLANDER and other journals
have since published in reproof of it. It was undertaken for the purpose of suggesting the invalidity of
those popular methods of reasoning on the subject in
question, which those respectable periodicals represent, and of allaying the dangerous agitations which
they have contributed to produce. It was designed
to encourage a more legitimate method of discussion,
by turning inquirers from the accidents and contingents of slavery, which occasion such irreconcilable
diversities of opinion among wise and good men, and
inflame the passions of the generality, to its elementary principles, its providential design, and its comprehensive bearings and relations in respect to the
moral government of God. The question of slavery,
especially as it concerns ministers of the Gospel, is
simply ethical and theological.   It must be tried,
therefore, by a Divine standard, and not at the bar
of an imaginative philosophy, or a sentimental philanthropy; not on the political arena, nor by vote of
popular assemblies, or the conceits of fiction and
romance.   The letter proposed that authoritative
test.  "To the law and to the testimony."
It is no answer, then, merely to reproduce, in
similar or different forms, the same arguments or
methods whose unsoundness and fallaciousness had
been condemned. Nothing is settled by merely evading the criterion which Presbyter propounds, and 
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ringing changes upon the exhausted topics of antislavery literature which that criterion reproves. Such
finesse might suffice for a temporary popular effect,
but could serve no abiding purpose of truth or charity. It is unworthy of the subject, and the occasion.
Presbyter takes the question of slavery from its accidents to its principles, and discusses it accordingly.
HIe must be met, therefore, on his own ground, or,
whether right or wrong, his letter is not answered;
and all avoidance of its issues, or stale repetitions of
contrary theories and interpretations, are a virtual
acknowledgment of its correctness. Wherefore, the
criticisms of the NEW ENGLANDER, and others like
them, because they are thus evasive, need no refutation, but a reference to the letter itself. Yet it may
be of consequence to show, more particularly, and in
detail, wherein they reach not their mark; and to lay
open the sophistry which is intended to give them
the appearance and effect of a reply.
In this pamphlet, Presbyter will confine himself
especially' to his reviewer in the NEW ENGLANDER.
That ardent writer is a fit representative of his class.
From one all may be known: for, though they
exhibit different degrees of learning and ingenuity,
they use the same materials, and after the same
fashion. There could, indeed, be but little difference
between them in these respects; for the fountain of
their new philosophy is not deep, and a single channel
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suffices to bear off its impetuous and noisy waters.
The reviewer is one of the best specimens, and is
accordingly so commended by his satisfied friends.
He publishes by request.  He is a writer of evident
intelligence and Christian virtue, -- well informed,
earnest, sincere, resolved. He condemns his adversarvy, without stint, and agreeably to his honest convictions, for alleged intellectual blindness and moral
delinquency. He pities him, as is kind, in his consequent state of degradation; and does what he can to
abridge his pernicious influence. Yet he does not
quite abandon him as a reprobate; and would give
him over to public censure, and official destruction,
only for the sake of hi- ultimate repentance  and
salvation. Presbyter would take no exception to
him, in these respects; for every writer should be
suffered to free himself agreeably to his own sensibilities and tastes. His ideas,. and not his temperament,
or his rhetoric, alone concern the question at issue.
All that is now proposed is to show wherein his argument is nothing to his purpose; and to elucidate
more fully the principles which he so imperfectly
comprehends, and so ineffectually disputes. Indeed,
but for this latter purpose, namely, the fuller devetgpment and exposition of the principles embodied in
his first letter, Presbyter would not have thought it
material to invite his brethren to the perusal of a
second. - The logical order, both of the letter and the 
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review, will be followed, as far as it may seem of
consequence to pursue the subject.
I. THE QUESTION.
The letter of Presbyter first calls the attention of
its readers to the question of the Divine right of slavery.
He uses the term according to its proper scientific
import, - as the denominator of a state of bondage
in which one man becomes, by law, the property of
another man, and subject to the master's will. The
definition is implied, expressed, and kept up throughout the letter, and is continually guarded as simply
and alone descriptive of the stated relation subsisting
between the parties.   The one owns, the other is
owned, according to law so made and provided. It
presupposes an authority of the State, under God, to
institute the relation, and to regulate it, agreeably
to its natural intention and design.   The  master
becomes, by law, sole proprietor, and the slave a
chattel personal, in distinction from a chattel material,
which implies, from necessity of the case, that their
respective moral and spiritual relations are undisturbed, and that both master and slave are brought
together in peculiar and distinctive relations, as well
to God as to each other; and are held to answer for
the performance of their respective duties to him as
the sovereign proprietor and ruler of all.  Buthe
slave is the master's money. No man but the master
has a right to his person, or his services; and he has 
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no right to withhold service from the master, or
alienate it to another man.   He is subject to his
master's will alone; but both parties are under law
to God, and to God's minister- the State.
The question is whether this relation is right or
wrong; and it is independent of the moral character
of the master, or the slave, and distinct from it. One
or the other, or both, may be bad men, in any sense
of the term; but that affects not the nature, intention,
or design of the relation which is constituted between
them. Slavery is a variety of government by which
one man rules over another, and holds him subservient
to his will, as his lawful and proper possession, subject
to the ordinances of God, and of the State. The
question is not whether this species of property may
be acquired rightfully by mere rapine, fraud, or
stealth or used for nefarious purposes, or regulated
by tyrannical and oppressive laws, - for that question
would be absurd, -but whether God forbids it to be
acquired, held, or used at all; that is, whether it is
prohibited in Scripture; or, whether, in the nature
of the case, it is impossible for one man so to rule
over another man without violating the principles
of natural justice and benevolence?  and whelther
States, or individual persons under their authority, in
carrying on slavery at all, do certainly and necessarily
sin against God?
These distinctions are  perfectly obvious.   Our 
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quick reviewer himself admits them. He could not
do otherwise. He does more, as bound by his religious profession. He admits that if God has required
or authorized one part of the human family to enslave
another part, that constitutes a right, or duty, or both,
as the case may be.   This admission presupposes the
absolute sovereignty of God over all his creatures,
his infinite knowledge of their character, conditions,
and wants, and his prerogative, as infinitely excellent
in all respects, to carry on the affairs of the world so
as best to subserve the ends of its present fallen, sinful, but reprieved and probationary state. It precludes all creatures from sitting in judgment upon
the counsels of God, or questioning his decrees. It
recognizes the first and fundamental principle of
theology and ethics, without which right and wrong,
in any actual sense, would be impossible, namely, a
personal God and moral governor, in opposition to all
atheism and mere naturalism; and it justifies the
supreme authority of natural and revealed religion
as the guide of life, inasmuch as there can be no
higher will, or authority, or standard of right and
wrong than the Divine will, and no appeal from it.
The reviewer, as a minister of the Gospel, is aware
that he must begin with the acknowledgment of this
principle, or he has no foundation. Had he kept it
distinctly before his mind, and held to it, consistently,
in his subsequent writing, he would have come out in
very different conclusions.
$ 
10.
But our excited author, captivated by his idol of
an inner light, a higher law, a godlike consciousness, - the imaginary self-divinity of the human
nature, - and dazzled by his chimera of a divine and
free humanity, when he begins to reason, immediately
deserts the principle, and confounds the distinctions
which he had acknowledged. HIe turns short away
from the issue which Presbyter had proposed, and
presents another, and a different issue which is nothing-to his purpose. All his subsequent reasoning has
respect only to that falsely substituted issue, and is
mere legerdemain.
Thus: -the reviewer presents truly, that Presbyter proposes " to defend  the institution (slavery)
which exists in this country." But that is not the
proposition which it is convenient for him to controvert, and he immediately qualifies it by an adjunct of
his own, which makes it another, and a different proposition; namely, that it is the object of Presbyter to
defend the institution which exists in this country,as it exists; and not only so, but as it exists according
to the reviewer's own onesided and distorted account
of it. He argues not, as he ought, on the first and
true, but, as he ought not, on the second and'false
presentment of the question. He makes that false
presentment the entire and only ground of his whole
criticism.   Presbyter had not proposed  to defend
slavery, as it exists inll this country or as it ever
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existed anywhere, on the whole, and much less as it
exists in the morbid fancy of the reviewer; -just as
he would not undertake to defend Nero, but government; the pope, but Christianity; administrators, but
their institutions; accidents, but their substances;
the abuses of a thing, but the thing itself. He
insisted upon these fundamental distinctions, lest his
incautious brethren, in their zeal against bad factors
and agents, should assail an ordinance of God, and
precipitate ruin when they intended only reformation.
Bad masters there are, and bad laws, and bad customs
at the South; and because of the manifold existing
evils and irregularities growing out of the abuses of
slavery, Presbyter himself insisted that the judgments of heaven were impending over the guilty
nation, of which judgments not the least is the permitted madness of the abolitionists.   He accepted
not their exaggerated and absurd accounts of these
existing evils. He rebuked their false statements,
their intemperate crusade whose natural effect would
be a civil and servile war, their wild romance of a
new but nondeseript reconstruction of the State upon
the hitherto undefined, and forever indefinable, and
incomprehensible ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity,
in any merely natural conditions of the earth and
man. But great abuses were admitted; not as
reasons for subverting foundations laid, as Presbyter
affirmed, by the providence of God, but for building 
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upon them a superstructure more conformable to his
will, and more subservient to his designs. All this
the reviewer studiously evades. He presents Presbyter, invidiously, as the defender and patron, not of
an institution, which, on his own admission, ought to
be patronized if it be an ordinance of God, but of
the abuses of that institution whose Divine origin is
the very question in dispute.  He should have met
that question on the grounds suggested by Presbyter- the only grounds where a true decision can be
had, - instead of diverting the attention of his readers,
as he has done, by a mere logical finesse. Yet Presbyter believes him not to have intended an artifice.
He was merely bewildered by the excitement of his
chimerical ideas.   There are intoxications besides
that of strong drink, and far more dangerous,  in
which men sometimes see double, and seem to themselves to hit the substance when they strike only at
the spectre.
Presbyter proposed that slavery may be from
God, because of its analogy, in many respects, to
other varieties of rule and government over the
fallen world, which are admitted to have had their
origin in him. He claimed that Christian ministers
ought to inquire diligently into these probabilities,
and all other sources of evidence in natural and
revealed religion, lest, instead of being guides and
conservators, they should inconsiderately become 
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agitators of society.  He  argued that we  are not
competent to determine, a priori, nor at all by our
unassisted faculties, and least of all, by our mere
instincts, or by random hypotheses and speculations,
how such a world as this should be carried on. We
must ask at the oracles. We must take our impressions, not from caricatures, but originals; and decide,
not passionately, but in the sobriety of calm research.
Previously to such inquiry, or independently of it,
to criticize slavery, or any other analogous institution, by our imperfect ideas,'onesided observations,
or undigested and untried theories; to accept the
accounts of heated reformers, or selfish politicians; or
even to follow the impulse of more generous but undisciplined sensibilities, is unreasonable and unsafe.
It is unworthy of Christian men, religious teachers,
and the leaders of God's people.  There is too much
at stake. Yet that is the course of our excellent
reviewer, and of his school in general. He describes
slavery as bad at any rate, a system of mere oppressions and cruelties; and his adversaries as demoralized men claiming the Divine authority for an institution unquestionably the sum of all villanies and
abominations. One is amazed that a minister of the
Gospel should condescend to argue with any persons
who, in his judgment, are, intellectually, so blind, and,
morally, so perverse. But he has done it; and it is
therefore pertinent to analyze his reasonings.
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II. THE ARGU.MENT. - 1. From Araltiral Religion. If,
by natural religion were intended nothing more than
our reviewer seems to have contemplated, namely,
the view which the mind takes of our relations and
duties to God from a study of the works of nature, it
would indeed be questionable whether slavery, or
any other institution of social life, would stand the
test of its criticism; or rather, whether there would
then be any criticism, or any social state at all. The
mere deductions and inferences of our unassisted
minds from such partial observations as even the
most cultivated, with their natural depraved biases,
would be likely to take of the system of the world,
would be of very little value as a guide of life. In
respect to the ignorant and besotted, who, in all
periods, have constituted the generality, they would
be-worse than useless. Consequently, the wise and
foolish, by different roads, would meet, at length, in
the same abyss of confusions, discords, and destructions,-as Paul has shown.  God has never so left
the world absolutely, to itself: but so far as he has
done it, the demonstration of man's incompetency has
been complete. There is no historical evidence, from
any age or nation, that society could establish itself
in virtue and prosperity by the teachings even of
induction and experience; and, as to the mere instincts, or the speculative faculties, there is still less
reason to believe that it could be carried on at all by 
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such infantile or fantastic administrations.   Man's
sufficiency for self-knowledge, self-government, or
self-salvation, is a brilliant phantom;  but it figures
only in the reveries of the philosopher, the declamations of the politician, the more questionable lucubrations of the speculative theologian, or the romantic
dreams of children in general. It abides no practical
test whatever. Apart from prophecy we, could not
reason to a perfected state of the earth, or man,
from any data of history or -experience; and the
Scripture refers such a predicted state only to
supernatural power. In actual life it soon vanishes
into thin air.
The problem of our relations and duties to God
which reason would not have been likely even to
originate, and certainly could never have solved has
its origin and solution in the express teachings of
God himself. They are embodied in natural and revealed religion. Natural religion, equally with revealed, is taught of God. It is not nature's teachings
concerning God, but God's teachings concerning
nature, by which He binds the'universe to himself;
and this order it is infinitely dangerous to invert.
Natural religion is not our instinct, or judgment, or
fancy, nor our wishes or interpretations concerning
our relations and duties to God and to each other; for
that would be to invest humanity with the attributes
of Divinity, and to nullify the Godhead. But it is 
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God's authoritative instruction to us as his creatures,
and thile subjects of his government, during our natural state of life and' society, in this probationary
period of our being. Man originates it not, but God
dispenses it.  God, who made the world, gives it the
law - which, however, man refuses and disobeys.
God dispenses, and man obscures and perverts it.
SIan declines to brutishness except as God raises
him; and the ignorance and wickedness of the world
are both cause and consequence of man's unwillingness to be raised. It is as true of natural religion as
of revealed, -" This is the condemnation that light
has come into the world, and they have loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil."
The light of all dispensations, is a-mere instance of
the Divine benignity and mercy, for the benefit of the
otherwise hopelessly alienated and lost. God's communications are not the supplement or complement
of man's discoveries,- mere helps to our original and
self-moved inquiries,- by which God rewards and
satisfies our antecedent desire and pursuit of knowledge and virtue; but they constitute  all the true
knowledge we possess, which, however, we like not
to retain; or we retain it in our memory but to pervert it in our judgment and affections, and dishonor
it in our practice, holding the truth of God in unrighteousness, till we "are given over to strong delusion to believe a lie." Great are the confusions of 
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the world from turning these matters round about,
and putting the Divinity in leading strings to humanity, till, insensibly, we make our conceits interpreters
of the Divine Wisdom, and measure the vast and incomprehensible scheme of providence by our infinitely low ideas.   Probably these confusions were
never greater than at present; nor, in respect to any
subject, than the question now in hand. And they
are likely to be worse confounded in the senseless
unhingeings and disintegrations of society.
Agreeably to these views which have stood in the
judgment of all truly learned and pious antiquity, we
hold to natural religion, not as a human, but a Divine institution; not as a product of the human faculties likely or possible to have been reasoned out
by man, but of God's Spirit who first moved over the
physical chaos and said, - " Let there be light!" It
is a revelation, but oral and traditional, in distinction
from a written revelation, dispensed, in successive
periods, according to the exigencies of society, to
men called and appointed of God, as his servants, to
be the teachers and guides of mankind in general.
It is God's own account of his mode of governing
the world, and his rule for the subordinate government of it by his authorized servants, handed down
through successive generations, till it was at length
incorporated and republished, with overt formalities
and miraculous attestations, in the holy Scriptures.
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It existed before the Scriptures, but was inserted in
them, and is proved by them. The Scriptures, except
so far as they are merely emblematical, or historical
of the distinctive work of Christ, or political for the
Jewish nation, consist but of a more full edition and
enforcement of the earlier oral revelations given for
the personal and social regulation of the fallen world.
The peculiar work of Christ recognizes them, is built
upon them, and is consistent with them. The doctrines and precepts of Christianity all affirm them,
and require us to live in agreement with them. Any
refusal of them, or any rationalistic interpretation, as
if they were superseded by the Gospel, or the Gospel
were superseded by the new lights of a more advanced age, would put the several related parts of
the Divine economy out of hlarmony with each other.
It would virtually nullify them all; and the practical
effect would be a general disturbance and disorganization of society. Christianity then only accomplishes
its intended work of ameliorating the condition of
mankind, when, for Christ's sake, his promised Spirit
renews the minds of individual persons, and thus
diffuses the heavenly life through the constituted
orders and relations of natural society. Christianity
intermeddles not with any natural institutions. It
proposes no change of social organizations.  It leaves
them as God ordained thenm under the natural law;
but to be interpenetrated by his Spirit, and carried 
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on conformably to their natural and constitutional
design till "The times of restitution," when the
whole  fallen scene shall  be supernaturally  reconstructed, and "The kingdom of God" shall come.
Very instructive it is to observe how, in respect
to the question here under review, natural religion
falls into the current of Scripture, and the Scripture
casts its light back upon natural religion, and both
illustrate the comprehensive scheme of God's natural
and moral providence. By the natural law of wickedness the discords and irregularities of earth tend
constantly to increase and multiply, and to issue, as
in material natures, in a series of destructions and
new  creations.   The power of evil in individual
minds accumulates, and the consequent disturbances
of the social state become more aggravated, till, without restraints, premature and universal catastrophe
would ensue. God speaks the word, - for his rainbow is painted on the cloud, - and says to the proud
swelling waves: "Thus far shall ye go, but no further."  He interposes gover^nients, to sustain the feeble,
to check the unruly, to punish transgressors, to destroy the incorrigibly wicked, to make such examples
of the evil of sin, and of his displeasure against it,
that men may see and be afraid, and that the distracted world may not die before its time. The most
comprehensive form of delegated government, and,
according to nature, the most authoritative, is the 
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State; and the State is God's minister, bearing not
the sword in vain.
But the world, revolted as it is from the Creator,
makes very difficult work for the subordinate governments of earth. The difficulty is increased by the
imperfection and malfeasance of public officers, who
sometimes abuse their power till the whole distracted
scene winds up in revolution, and'a new dynasty
appears. But dynasties must exist; for the world,
and every State, like every particular man, have their
respective periods, and, in a state of anarchy, would
prematurely die. For the more effectual regulation
of society every State is obliged to make various distribution of its powers. Tribes, hordes, states, races,
sometimes fall off to such low degrees of ignorance,
barbarism, and licentiousness, as to require great vigilance and severe authority from the more intelligent
and civilized, lest they should become self-destructive,
or injurious to neighboring States, or precipitate
general confusion throughout the world.   Civilized
communities are driven to various expedients to forestall, dimninish, or alleviate these necessary evils. One
of these providential expedients, as old as society
itself, and an accredited elemnent in its government
from the beginning, is domnestic slavery, - sign of a bad
word, yet necessary to keep it from worse conditions;- badly enough administered, at best and
sometimes past endurance, yet, better, on the whole, 
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than would.be the absence of it, in the existing state
of society at large.
Domestic slavery breaks up the power of undisciplined and barbarous hordes, and prevents their destructive combinations.   It multiplies, indefinitely,
the officers of government, distributes them over the
greatest surface, and diffuses the benefits of restraint
and discipline among large numbers of the ignorant
and besotted who could not be reached conveniently,
or at all, by, the central power, or its provincial
deputies. It places under the control of the more
intelligent and thrifty families, imbecile or disorderly
persons who would otherwise roam unlicensed, and
trains them up to a higher capacity and privilege
than they could otherwise, by any possibility, attain.
It does this with the least possible expense, and with
the advantage of enlisting the humane sympathies
and prudential interests of masters for elevating the
otherwise incapable to a higher appreciation of civilized life, and corresponding efforts to obtain a fitness
for more dignified conditions. Society in general is thus
preserved from premature catastrophes, approximates
more nearly to as high a condition of liberty, intelligence, thrift, and happiness as could be supposed
possible in any merely natural state of the fallen
world. There is nothing conceivable in the insitution itself, apart from the character of the parties
connected with it, - in which respect it stands on a 
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simple equality with all other institutions of earth,
that is not fitted, as things are, to diminish necessary
evils, and secure the otherwise improbable or impossible benefits of a probationary state.
If this account of domestic slavery be called
theoretical, it has at least the merit of being strictly
justified by the well-known character of mankind,
and of having been acted upon by the constituted
guides and guardians of society, since the children of
the first murderer interfered with the children of
the first righteous man. It has the greater merit of
being republished in the first written statutes of the
Almig,hty, and inwrought into the Mosaic code,-a
rule for God's chosen people who accordingly subjugated, bought, and sold the barbarians round about
them, and made them hewers of wood and drawers
of water for the congregation and altars of the Lord.
The New Testament, equally with the Old, recognizes
the natural institution, reflects its peculiar light back
upon it, and confirms it as, natural ordinance of
God. It stands thus in the Divine counsels as well
ascertained and settled, in its own order, as any other
natural institution for the well-being of mankind,
and must stand against all the spurious wisdom of a
conceited and bewildered generation. To contend
against it is to contend against the government of
God, and put in jeopardy the social interests of the
world. 
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It is out of question that slavery presupposes and
implies the sadly depraved character of mankind.
That, however, is not the fault of the institution, but
of the corrupted race. It is equally out of question
that it has been made an occasion of-the greatest
crimes,- which, however, equally proves only the
criminality of its depraved administrators in prostituting the Divine ordinance to their own lusts.
Slavery is adapted and appointed to other ends. It
is as likely to be useful, in its own natural order, in
the actual state of things, as other varieties of government, in their respective orders, administered by
imperfect and sinfuil men. It is so in fact. History
makes it experimentally evident, that, in the worst
periods of society, as there have been some righteous
fathers, and some righteous magistrates, so there
have been some righteous masters, and their good
conduct has contributed to prolong the continuance
of the body politic. Society, in all periods, consists
of a mixture of good and bad men; and the same
interior principle of goodness, whether the natural
goodness of humane affection, or the higher and saving virtue of supernatural grace, that has made
some men benefactors in one relation, has also
made them benefactors in other relations, and they
have so far held society together,   " The  salt of
the earth, and the light of the world." From the
times of the patriarchs till now, the good and bad 
24
administrations of slavery have been in fair proportion to those of other related institutions of social
life;  and  have  a similar justification in the unperverted conscience of mankind. Badly as slavery
has been carried on in these last days, and in
our own country, it has actually, in no small degree,
answered its righteous and benevolent design.  Its
moral statistics, in comparison with those of African
barbarians on their native deserts, or of the emancipated among the civilized nations, are demonstrative
of its beneficial influence, on the whole, and its subserviency to the all-wise purposes of God.   They are
sufficient to relieve a serious and impartial mind, in
respect to the many real or seeming evils that necessarily attend it.  The whole  natural condition of
slaves, in every part of the world, in respect to food,
clothing, shelter, health, safety, and the means of
physical happiness in general, is far superior to that of
any undisciplined negroes on the earth; and, in respect to religious knowledge and moral culture, there is
no comparison. That this condition is no better is, of
course, a shame to the Christian nations. But that
the righteous judgment of heaven in the institution
itself, and in the conduct of it, has been tempered
with so much mercy, and has, to some considerable
extent through the influence of good and patriotic
men, answered its natural design, is a striking instance
of the wisdom and goodness of God. If any, in the 
wildness of their romantic zeal, would subvert and
abolish it, as things still are, and project their
schemes of revolution in accordance with their
visionary ideas, they are not'likely to be checked by
any such reference as is here made to the principles
of the Divine government, the records of history, or
the warnings of experience. Nothing can overcome
a vain conceit. But no reasonable man would choose
to live when and where their experiment should be
made.
To views like these, which have been professed by
the church of God in general, in all the ages, -except
when it has been infected, as at present, by a more
illuminated philosophy,*- and by which it has, with
* The anti-slavery excitements of past ages of the church, as referred to
by the reviewer, are not properly exceptions to the views above expressed.
They were in general produced, not by speculative theories of liberty and
equality, but by the natural revolt of Christian and humane principles
against wanton abuses of the slaveholding power; and they contemplated
not the overthrow of slavery, but its reform; not a general jail-delivery,
but such occasional and local emancipations as might consist with the safety
of the State. They indicated the practical working of the great Christian
paradox of'mercy and truth meeting together, righteousness and peace
embracing each other,' and not the fanatical phrensy of the new era.
The Church, as represented by the men of sound religion and morality,
has never been, to any considerable extent, intoxicated by enthusiastic
and radical ideas; nor has it committed the honor of Christ to the keeping of visionary reformers, or intriguing politicians. That phenomenon
belongs especially to our present period; and yet, now, not to the church
general, but the church sectional. It is geographical. The boundary
between right and wrong, in this respect, can be traced on the map: - a
3
25 
26
a characteristic loyalty, sustained the institutions of
natural religion, our excited reviewer, under the
common illusions of his class, condescends to give no
attention. He simply turns them of, with an affected indifference, as being " mere vague conjecture
without a particle of proof." They do not strike
him. They have no meaning for him. He has been
too busy with his sentimental novelties, and reformatory speculations, too zealous in his new crusade for
a secular millennium, and for retaking Jerusalem before the time, to labor in this more fruitful field of
ethical and theological inquiry. He would even
think it profane to turn away his mind from the
bright vision of a golden age of universal emancipation, to pursuits so antiquated, and so cramping to
his new affection. He has chosen a different method.
Let it be observed more particularly.
It is not to be'doubted that our excellent reviewer,
principled as he professes to be, in the belief of the sinful character of mankind, would admit what has been
said above of the bad tendencies of society in general,
if it were said in connection with any other subject.
But, in respect to this stirring theme which has so filled
convenient way of making moral distinctions, but not absolutely true;for on this side of Mason and Dixon's line, there are seven thousand men
who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of any political idolatry.
They are men, too, of no small stature, whose power, though not greatly
felt at the ballot-box, will be acknowledged in heaven; for whose sake,
popular catastrophes, though not averted, may be deferred and shortened. 
27
and fired his lively imagination, he forgets, or practically ignores it, and reasons on the same line with
men whose opinions on other subjects he condemns,
and whose moral and social influence he would oppose. He places himself, unwittingly, in the worst
possible connections, and gives his sanction to a 
course of thinking which consistently terminates in a
habit of general unbelief. In his honest zeal for a
state of universal brotherhood, he appreciates not the
present incapacity of the generality to' enjoy such a
blessing, or the perpetual impossibility of any such
organization of society, without higher degrees of intelligence and virtue than have been yet attained in
the history of mankind. When he touches this theme,
he overlooks the general ignorance and incompetence
of men which he has acknowledged, their selfishness
and recklessness which he has deplored, their unbelief, perverseness, and hardness of heart for which
God condemns them, and the necessity of governments, and widely distributed helps, to any tolerable
enjoyment of the means of happiness, and even the
existence of a social state. He refers too much to
the tyranny of rulers too little to the incapacity and
rebelliousness of subjects, and computes, inadequately,
the reciprocal influence of these destructive causes
in the existing derangements of the world. Defective social organizations figure more to his excited
imagination than the spirit of wickedness in every  
28
human heart, and the abuses of authority seem
equivalent to its unwarrantable assumption.  HIe sees
but one side of the question before him, and that he
places out of its natural relations.  He discusses slavery, not as referable to any public necessities, or as
conducive to any beneficial ends, but as begun, continued, and ended in the lusts and passions of usurpinig despots; not as a matter of general expediency,
but individual malignity; not as if God were using it,
by good and bad men alike, in the exercise of their
respective voluntary natures, to perfect his designs
of government, but as the work only of malignant
spirits to defeat the ends of Providence, and multiply
victims of destruction. He reasons as if all these
evils were inherent in the system; as if the system
alone corrupted the men, not men the system; and
the destruction of the system would be the regeneration of the men.  He is turned about.  He mistakes
mechanism for life, and life for mechanism; the predicate for the subject; the clothes for the man; and
sinks his own Christian doctrine of sin in the pagan doctrine of derangement. He looks at the latter, directly,
with his telescope, and at the other with the instrument
inverted. HIe renounces the experimental wisdom' of
the past, and exalts the speculative fancies of the present; and the one Christ of the Bible gives way; in his
mind, to the many Christs of a more spiritual philosophly. He is charmed. In the extravagance of his 
29
enthusiasm he would, by a touch, transport society
from its present rough scene of probation, trial, and
discipline, to Utopia, and mesmerize the accursed
earth into paradise regained.
This unfortunate habit of mind leads him, against
his better principles, to blur, misrepresent, and caricature whatever is likely to disturb his pleasant
dream.   Thus: -he  travesties  the  argument of
Presbyter as if, because there are convulsions and
calamities in the physical, therefore Presbyter had
concluded there ought to be also corresponding disturbances in the moral world; that, because strong
beasts devour the weaker, therefore strong men
ought to act like beasts o[ prey towards their
inferiors; and that "a course of oppression is better
adapted to reform bad men, or relieve the imbecile
and ignorant, than one of manifest kindness and compassion."   Consequently, assuming,- for he never
loses sight of his grand postulate,  that slavery,
per se, is necessarily a system of oppression and
cruelty, he makes Presbyter commit the odious absurdity of preferring injustice and cruelty to kindness
and compassion.
In a less excited state of mind our warm reviewer
would have spared this invidious rhetoric, and discussed his adversary's reasoning as it is,-if he had
then seen fit to discuss it at all; -  not that, because
the physical world is disordered, therefore it is right
3* 
30
to disorder also thq moral and social world, -but,
that physical, moral, and social natures are alike disordered,. and by the same  universal cause; -that
they are all related parts of one comprehensive
system;-that, all these related parts, being alike
upheaved, disjointed, and deranged by sin, it is the
will of God measurably to control and limit their
common irregularities, during the present probationary state of the earth and man; -that, as it is
sometimes needful, for security, improvement, and
life itself, to curb and restrain the disorderly elements
of the one, so also of the other;   that all this is
made evident by the records of history, the analogies
of experience, and, lmore authoritatively, by natural
religion, whether traditional or republished in the
Holy Scriptures; -that not only wisdom and justice,
but goodness and mercy, appear in this, as in all
other departments of the Divine government; - that
all the Divine attributes are equally honored in
putting ignorant and imbecile men under guardianship, and the vicious under restraint, agaist their svill,
when higher interests are at stake, and as well on a
large scale as a small, - in respect to a race as to an
individu, al man; -that it is better to make  them
grind in the mill for their subsistence, and the benefits of discipline, than to leave them in their natural
state of hopeless incompetency and savage ferocity;that the State, God's minister and representative, is the 
31 
proper judge of occasions for the exercise of'its prerogative, in these respects; -that these occasions it
is not more difficult to understand than how to secure
ourselves against frosts, mildews, and volcanoes'; or the
ravages of war, pestilence, and famine; or the disadvantages of ordinary pauperism and crime;- and
that it is a part of our providential discipline, in this
bad world, to do all these analogous things, by appropriate means and such as God ordains, and to do
thenm thoroughly and well, that the ills of this life
may be as much as possible diminished, till God shall
remove them, if at all, in some  way unknown to
nature and experience, by removing the cause of
them in the wickedness and imbecility of man. This
reasoning is not blind; and it would not have been
difficult for the reviewer to have understood it, if he
had been less impatient of it, or of its natural effect;
and he would not then have paraded the absurd
inference which he has drawn from it, - that "' the
Saviour, if he had entertained such views, would
have sent forth strong companies of slave-catchers
and traders, instead of a few peaceful disciples,
among the benighted and degraded inhabitants of
the earth."
But he would have been likely to have drawn another and a different inference which evidently he did
not think of, - that these peaceful disciples, when they
made converts among the enslaved, would not exhort 
32
them to manifest their Christian spirit by overturning
and abolishing an institution intended to restrain and
discipline incompetent and wicked men, - an institution which, notwithstanding their own particular inconveniences and sufferings in it, had raised them
fromn the worse condition of barbarians, and brought
them within reach of the means of grace; and which
now would best serve the ends of the Divine governmnent by their submissive and obedient behavior in
it. He would have recollected, also, that these same
disciples had acted upon that more natural inference,
and had authoritatively required of all converted
slaves to whom the Gospel should ever come, that
they should be obedient to their own masters who had
bought them with money, even as to Christ who had
bought them with blood,'counting them worthy of
all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be
not blasphemed,' not " the good and gentle only, but
also  the  froward,"  "whereunto  also  they  were
called;"   that they had required these precepts
to be everywhere taught, with exhortation, declaring "that if any man teach otherwise he is proud,
knowing nothing, doting about questions and strifes
of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil
surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt
minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain
is godliness,"'from whom every Christian man should
withdraw himself'   He would have better appre 
33
ciated the charge of the great Apostle, -   If thou
mayest be free, use it rather,"- it is far better;
"but, if thou be a slave, care not for it"     stand in
thy probation; profit by thy discipline;  be content
with food and raiment,' and you shall soon be a king
in glory. Those inspired men knew, better than
their illuminated critics of the present time, what
belonged to the integrity of natural religion, and its
relations to a higher dispensation.
If our reviewer had more carefully considered
these not unintelligible matters, he would also have
comprehended what he now professes himself unable
to fathom;- namely, the reason why, upon the principles of Presbyter, the servants of the church should
not now reduce bad and injurious men to servitude,
for the peculiar ends of the church; for example,
their conversion.  He would have understood that
reason to be, because the ends of the church are pecutliar; because church and State are organized for essentially different purposes, requiring different administrators, and different methods. He would have perceived the church to be an ecelesia, -a class of persons called, supernaturally, out of the.State, for peculiar ends of the Divine government; and that their
Christian duty, in relation to the State, is, to be an
example of righteousness whereby the State might be
kept true to its first and Divine principles, and not
subject to agitations and overturnings by counter 
34
acting its original design. He would have learned.
that Christian men, and ministers of the Gospel,
would best show their fidelity to the State, and to the
Lord of all, not by discussing governmental theories
and puzzles; not by promulgating mere speculative
doctrines of liberty, equality, and the rights of man;
not by overstepping their sphere to instruct and lead
the governments  of earth;  not by devising plans,
and multiplying experiments for the better ordering
of affairs; but by the practical commending of a
meek-and quiet spirit, and the dignified proprieties of
a godly life; not by catering to the prejudices and
passions of uineasy and ambitious partisans, nor by
vain attempts to sanctify political factions and cabals,
or the course of civil legislation, by the professed or
real purity of their religious profession, but by diffusing among all classes and parties the healthful influence of a renewed mind.   He  would have apprehended that Christianity saves bad men, not by compelling, but attracting  them  to the common  Redeemer; not by political organizations, but the spirit
of faith and prayer; not by fomenting discords and
divisions, but by recalling the refractory and contentious to the duties of natural religion, through- superinduced principle of Christian love. He would
have better considered that the church, when it has
called in vain upon evil-doers to be reconciled to God,
must then leave the State to secure its own safety 
35
agreeably to the prescripts of its natural institution.
Hle would have judged, with a better appreciation of
government and law, that men  have no natural
rights independent of their duties to God, and to one
another; no authorized freedom from restraints without which they would perish in inactivity and want, or
bite and devour one another, or exterminate the better
portions of mankind. God has not so left the world;
nor is it consistent with his will that any theories of
human liberty, or any consequent stirrings of sentiments and sympathies which, as things are, would
naturally reduce the world to such a state, should
have countenance from Christian and patriotic men.
Bad enough all society is, and bad enough its natural
institutions are likely to become, in the decline incident to all things human, in the present state; but, at
the worst, they are better than would be the want of
them, or than the wild attempts of ignorant, corrupt,
and infatuated men to construct other forms, regardless of the principles of natural religion, and the inductions of a world-wide experience.  The Scripture,
echoing the voice of natural religion, finds terms
enough in which to condemn oppressors, and denounce  upon  them  the  righteous  judgments  of
heaven. But all language would fail to describe the
horrors of a general anarchy, or the worse confusions
of an universal Babel. Such a catastrophe, however,
can never happen. God is too merciful; and has 
36
otherwise ordained.  He will cast down the guilty
thrones of earth, and consume tyrants and oppressors
with fiery judgments to introduce the dominion of
the King of kings; but he will not leave mankind in
general to the wildfire of their ungodly passions.
Presbyter respects the generous sympathies of his
fraternal reviewer, and still more his many better
qualities of mind and heart. Had they been directed
by a different class of studies, regulated by more dispassionate reflection, and chastened by a less positive
and dogmatic spirit, they would have given a healthier tone to his mental activity, and contributed to a
safer use of his official influence. If, instead of kindling at the heresies and hardness of heart supposed to
be evinced in the letter of Presbyter, he had pursued
more deeply the inquiries suggested by it, he would
have gained, in that nlow so much neglected field of
ministerial research, more instructive and affecting
views of the Divine counsels, and corresponding excitements to a more evangelical benevolence. Natural religion would have taught him deeper mysteries
of providence, and  revelation higher purposes of
moral government.  HIe would have better comprehended the present disordered state of the earth and
man, and that illustrious prophetic future' when the
whole groaning and travailing creation shall be delivered from its bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.' 
37
2.'romi RPevealed Beligio)i.
To Presbyter's inquiries under this head, our considerate reviewer objects, -that slavery cannot be
an ordinance of Scripture because its alleged scriptural formulas do not correspond to his ideas and
definitions of the institution. Slavery, in his view,
and according to his ever recurring postulate, is
essentially and entirely evil, and its scriptural authority could not be admitted, without a formula as
express as that of the passover, or baptisip, or the
Lord's supper.
The solecism here involved is of little consequence.
It is, doubtless, an inadvertency. But it is of consequence to maintain the principle which the objection
overlooks, that the will of God is supreme and authoritative, however it be declared in his word. It is not
for us to prescribe with what forms, or in what terms,
he shall make known his will. We are competent
judges, a priori, neither of what God should ordain,
nor how he should ordain it; and to object, afterwards, that any published institution of his is incredible because, in either or both of these respects, it is
inconsistent with our ideas of right or fitness, is to
sit in judgment upon his wisdom, and is a virtual
abnegation of his authority. Upon such a principle
Abraham would not have attained to the blessings of
the covenant; Lot would have perished in the burning Sodom; and the Israelites would have found
4 
38
their graves on the shores of the Red Sea. There is
no higher court than that of heaven.   An appeal
from that to an inner light of taste or conscience, is
unbelief. But it is greater folly; for whose taste, or
whose conscience shall be the umpire? It results in
utter confusion, or in submission to the strongest arm.
It breeds infidelity and anarchy first, and ends in
civil and religious despotism. It makes a short stay
at Paris, and pitches its tent at Rome.   But it is
atheistic everywhere.
It is not less to be observed that, between those
institutions which stand in natural religion,- that is,
those by which God carries on his government of
the world according to nature, and those other institutions which are supernatural, and peculiar to the
ecclesia, there is an essential difference, and God
makes a corresponding difference in their formulas
of appointment. The ordinances of the church are
first constituted and announced by Scripture. They
require, of course, special formality answerable to
their supernatural design.   The ordinances of the
State are anterior.   The  Scripture  finds them  as
they have existed for generations, gives them its
simple recognition, and modifies them  to suit the
exigencies of a new economy. This is enough to
settle their Divine authority; and God does no more
than is sufficient to his purpose.  He commits no
superfluity of legislation.   Whatever  ordinance  of 
39
natural religion we find acknowledged, confirmed,
and regulated by the written word, is as truly
Divine, as if it had its origin in the Revelations, and
is as positively obligatory, in its order, upon the
conscience of mrankind. It stands above the criticism of our faculties. It is simply for our faith. If
God, in the Scripture, admits and owns an antecedent
natural ordinance; if he refers to its antecedent
history as an exponent of his will in his general
natural government; if he declares, prophetically,
that it shall subsist a given length of time, or during
the existence of particular persons, nations, or races
upon the earth, or indefinitely; if he prescribes, by
express and positive legislation, how it shall be
administered in general, or, in specific instances,
dispenses formal rules for it in reference to certain
specific ends; if, in successive periods, he enacts,
occasionally, precepts adapted to the particular conditions of the parties concerned in it, or connected
with it; if he annuls it not before its appointed time,
nor at all, nor condemns it, nor gives the least intimation that it should be abolished; if he actually
and historically treats the respective parties according
to their behavior in it; and explicitly rebukes and
condemns all intermineddlers with it, and with other
related  institutions'as proud, knowing  nothing,
despisers of authority, and speaking evil of things 
40
they understand not;'- it must certainly be very
presumptuous to question such an ordinance, to
oppose it, to conspire against it, and move heaven
and earth to effect its overthrow because it does not
answer to our a priori ideas, or our speculative
notions in regard to the best way of governing the
world; or because it was not set up with terms and
definitions agreeable to our favorite hypotheses, or
our plans for the reformation of society, or the
opinions of our particular school, or sect; or because
its practical working falls short, in our judgment, of
its theoretical design, and disappoints our expectations; or because the world makes a bad use of it,
and thereby aggravates personal injuries or social
irregularities, baffling our reckonings of human progress, or oir predictions of a perfect state.  It is a
poor compliment to Scripture, and to the author of
it, to reduce it thus to the measure of our conceits
and speculations; and great impiety to pretend that
Scripture, when thus contrary to our notions, is a
curse to mankind, and ought to be rejected, as some
wise men have very unwisely affirmed.  It argues a
great exasperation and recklessness of the self-will,
and  is more  hazardous than  such  presumptinus
persons imagine to their stability in the faith, and
their beneficial influence in society. There is no
variety of scepticism that has not its origin in this 
41
vanity of human  conceit.  It is the historical and
prophetical cause of all the past, present, and future
apostasies of the church, and revolutions of the State.
To these first principles Presbyter directed the
inquiry of his brethren; and lhe doubts not that
they, and particularly the reviewer, would have found
no small advantage from keeping them diligently in
mind, instead of shunning and evading them. For
they admit of an easy application to the question of
slavery now in hand, and open up the whole body of
argument from Scripture in support of it. Slavery
is but the objective form of them, and as necessary
to them as body is to soul in constituting a perfect
man. The Scripture testifies to the whole series of
historical and prophetical facts which are their natural exponent, and vindicates, both in the facts and
principles, the holy government of God.
Thus:- the hand of inspiration points us, with
unmistakable precision, to the subjection of mankind
in general to the toil and sweat of sla8vig the earth,
upheaved, deranged, cursed with thorns and thistles,
vexed by terraqueous and atmospheric irregularities,
plagued with pestilences and famines, rocked by perpetual convulsions, and "reserved unto fire against
the day of judgment, and the perdition of ungodly
men," -on account of the sin of their progenitors;to the subsequent banishment, stigma, social inferiority,
and civil disability of the murderous Cain; -to the
4* 
42
proscription and alienation of his posterity in their
generations;-to the judgments which fell successively upon the descendants of Abel for intercourse
and intermarriage with the proscribed and accursed
race, till the earth was deluged on account of violating an ordinance which God had judged necessary to
the preservation of virtue, and the continuance of a
social state;-  to  the unnatural crime of Ham, at
the outset of a new experiment and dispensation
upon the repeopled earth; -to the consequent prophetic malediction of Noah upon this degenerate son,
corresponding to the previous curse of Cain, dooming
his posterity, definitely and indefinitely, to perpetual
servitude to his more virtuous brethren, and making
his degradation subservient to their social enlargement, as an everlasting memorial in vindication of
the righteous government of God; -to the historical
fulfilment of that prophetic curse in all the subsequent periods of Jewish and Christian history, verifying the Divine Word in a long course-of signal providenceseq ually with respect to the Hamitic, Semitic,
and Japhetic nations down to the present day, and
calling the attention of the world to this perpetual
sign of God's personality and active rule among the
children of men, through all the vicissitudes of human
affairs;- to the authorized enslaving of imbecile and
dangerous men by the patriarchs, in all periods, till
the giving of the law, in token of the Divine purpose 
43
to preserve society, measurably, henceforth, from the
evils which had brought the flood upon the earth;to the specific commands of God to the Israelites to
reduce  their barbarous and ungodly neighbors  to
bondage, in subserviency to the Divine purpose of
sequestering that nation, as his peculiar property, till
Japheth should come into possession of the tents of
Shem; - to the repeated  enslaving of  the  Jews
themselves, by Divine appointment, and in fulfilment
of Divine predictions, for their conformity to those
vile practices for which they had been commanded
to enslave their heathen neighbors, - all setting forth
the jealous care of the Divine providence lest society
should be broken up, in derogation of the Divine covenant, and the derangement of the Divine plan concerning the future Messianic ages; -to the judgmnents of God upon the Jews when they abused
this ordinance to the oppression of the heathen whom
they were required to reduce, and privileged to buy
and sell, for the better ordering of the State; and to
similar judgments upon the heathen when they inflicted like abuses upon the captive Jews;-to the
existence and severe abuses of slavery in the time of
Christ and the Apostles, their unqualified recognition
of the ordinance, and equally unqualified reprobation
of its abuses, and to their express and often repeated
injunctions upon both masters and slaves whereby the
ordinance would be made more subservient to its nat 
44
uiral design;   and to all this without the slightest
intimation in the Old Testament or the New, as if
slavery were a necessary and unmitigated evil, or inconsistent with any natural rights of man, or contrary
to any dictates of justice, benevolence, prudence, or
propriety; - but, contrarily implying, with irresistible significancy, that any such intimation, on any
such pretended grounds of natural rights, justice, benevolence, prudence, or propriety, would be absurd,
contradictory to all the known methods and historical records of the Divine government over the fallen
world, and not to be thought of by any Christian
man, or even any mere philanthropist who would
justify his title to such a name, in carrying on this
wild and distracted natural scene before the predicted
day of its supernatural restitution.   -
In the same line of reasoning it is also evident, and
of great consequence to be observed, that the same
Divine will which ordained slavery as an important
variety of government over degenerate men, has also
benignantly guarded it, in its own proper order, and
equally under natural ahd revealed religion, by the
remaining sympathies and charities of our fallen
nature; by our natural sense of order, decorum,
propriety, utility; by our hlumane and patriotic feelings; by the conveniences and comforts of domestic
life; by the force of public opinion, and the greater
stress of conscientious fear; by express precepts of 
45
the Scripture, and the general obligations which it
imposes upon all superiors in place and office; and,
in fine, by whatever checks, restraints, or inducements pertain to the nature of man and the social
state;   that express and specific judgments are also
denounced upon all who should abuse their prerogative, and lord it over their subject and abject fellowcreatures for the indulgence of their own passions;
and that God has, sometimes, for example to the
world, actually subjected such lordly tyrants to the
very indignities which they had wantonly inflicted
upon their inferiors and dependants, and even to the
lower condition of brute beasts - to eat grass like
oxen, -till the holy sovereignty of God was vindicated, and his righteous government was acknowledged.
But, though the Scriptural formulas of slavery be
different, for the reasons above suggested, from those
of ecclesiastical institutions, which have a supernatural origin, and a corresponding guarded limitation, they are not different from those of other
zatural ordinances republished in Scripture, and
whose Divine authority is consequently admitted by
all Christian men. For example; - the institution
of the family, and of the State in general- excepting only the theocratic nation of the Jews, - stand
on the same Scriptural basis with slavery; that is,
they are similarly recognized, confirmed, made the
subject of general legislation, and of express and 
46
positive precepts to the parties concerned in them.
We look in vain, in Scripture, for any such precise
commands in respect to any one of them, or such
definitions and limitations, as we find concerning the
passover, the apostolical commission, the eucharist, or
other ordinance merely appropriate to a new ecclesiastical discipline. Consistency requires, accordingly,
the acceptance of them all similarly, as Divine institutions; and the rejection of any one of them,
would, consistently, require the rejection of the
whole.   This is well understood by those who  are
committed to follow their anti-slavery ideas, at all1
hazards; and they behave accordingly. Whatever
may be thought of the principles of these infatuated
men, they deserve well for their straightforward logic,
and for never balking at natural conclusions.   We
should be tempted to admire their boldness, if we
did not know it to be the effect of madness, in consigning, as they do, the family, State, church, with
their respective degrees, prerogatives, and ordinances,
to the same grave of antiquated superstitions - the
alleged contrivance of kings and priests to hamper
the aspiritng intellect, and arrest the natural progress
of society. Our better reviewer, if he would' not
choose to be classed with these more liberated philanthropists, and come out  at length, in,a similar dishonor, should be careful not to put himself in their
ctrriculumi;  for a logical necessity, with reins  in
hand, it is very difficult to control. 
47
This remarkable drift of Scripture, in concurrence
with natural religion, it is, of course, an arduous
undertaking to withstand. It is easier to evade it;
and evasion is the familiar alternative of those who
are not yet prepared to renounce the Divine
authority of Revelation.   Their ingenuity, in this
respect, is worthy of a better cause. It is never at a
loss, when a seeming opportunity occurs, to suggest a
convenient contrary interpretation, or a questionable
fact of history; a mooted point in ethnology, a professional problem, or a fifth, tenth, twentieth, or a
figurative, instead of the natural and primary meaning of a Scripture term;* an array of onesided
* Our speculative reformers make very convenient use of philology and
criticism in support of their hypotheses. In their hands a dictionary is as
supple as a rod, which, if it had not a reflex action, through its natural
tendency to a perpendicular, might permanently serve their turns.  But it
reacts, and smites them; for, though it is easy to multiply accommodated
and figurative meanings of a term, it is difficult to conceal the original and
legitimate meaning, or to prove that meaning not applicable where God
has made it so. When that violence is used, nature and Scripture resume
their prerogatives, and avenge their wrongs.
An instance occurs in the Bibliotheca Sacra for October. An ingenious
writer would there convince us, by some display of learning, that "the
word used for servant, or bondservant, in the Hebrew Scriptures," does
not mean slatery. He is careful enough, like our reviewer, to say
"slatvery according to its modern definition."  But he would have his
readers understand, that slavery, without a qualification, has no warrant
from the Scripture. That is the object of his article.
But if the writer had pursued his inquiries more extensively, and upon
a more scientific method, he would have come out in directly opposite 
48
statistics, or the authority of a great name; a
scholastic theory, a political puzzle, or a declaration
conclusions.   And  those opposite  conclusions would  have been  just,
because consistent with the principles of language; the peculiar idioms
of Scripture; its general theology and ethics; and the facts of sacred
and profane history;- which cannot be said of his present speculations.
In all languages we find a word answering to our English word slave,
and expressing the same meaning; namely, bondman, bondservant, one
subject to a master,-the master's property legitimated according  to
the common  laws and usages of property.   This word  is traceable,
through all the languages, up to the original Hebrew, being the common
denominator of a relation actually existing in all nations from the earliest
periods of which we have any historical records.  There is no period in
which we do not find the account of persons so held in bondage as the
possession, the goods, the "money," of their lawfully constituted owners
and proprietors. Accordingly there is no time in which we do not find
the word.  We find the word because this relation subsists, and a proper
term is needed to express it. The thing requires the name, and the name
signifies and indicates the thing. From time immemorial, the word which
answers to our slave, means a slave, and nothing else, except by figure and
accommodation which  nobody practically misunderstands.   An ebed at
Jerusalem; a doulos at Athens; a servus at Rome; and a slave at
Washington, have been as well understood, in those respective representative cities, to mean a chattel personal, as son has been understood to
mean the child of his father, and for the same reason, namely, the actual
subsistence of the relation denoted by it, though both these terms have
had numerous accommodated and figurative applications, enough to give
the largest scope to fanciful philologists.
If we inquire why this particular word has always been used to denote
this particular relation, we find the account of it at the setting up of the
world, when man became "sold under sin," an ebed -a slave to the
great adversary, and to his own lusts and passions;   a slave to the earth,
condemned to toil and sweat for bread; a slave to death, the bondage of
the dust out of which he was created; a slave of slaves, for the earth itself,
cursed for man's sake, remaineth, and groaneth, and travaileth in pain, till 
49
of independence; a conjecture, a quibble, a sarcasm,
or personal reproach;-  concluding always by an
the palingennesia, when' the creature shall be delivered from its bondage of
corruption.' The word is applied to the race generically, from the beginning, because it is'taken captive,'  sold,''bound,''subject,''enslaved' by
evil; and, specifically, onwards, to-such portions of it as most fail to profit
by the advantages of a probationary state, and require restraint and
discipline, till "the times of restitution."  The whole chain hangs down
from the throne of God; and a child may follow it, link by link. The
child will not mistake till he goes to school, and is puzzled by self-interested and partisan expounders. Our friend of the Bibliotheca has been
to school, and is confused by the jargon. If he will return to simplicities,
"as a little child," he will see it all; and he will make the greatest attainment of earth, - deliverance from the slavery of scholastic subtleties into
the freedom of natural and revealed religion.
It is time that the Scripture should not be made to speak, for party
purposes, what it does not mean. The laws of language are laws of God,
and should no more be bent firom their integrity, for the ends of an
hypothesis, or the interests of a party, than the laws of material nature,
or the ten commandments. If we so bend them, they will return and
smite us.
Not many years ago, our subtle theorists of social reform expended,
after the same fashion, whatever philological and critical learning they
could command, to convince the country that wine, "according to its
modern definition," is as much unknown to Scripture as they now pretend of slavery; and that it ought, therefore, to be abolished, even from
the Lord's table. And they convinced many to whom what is printed is
always, of course, true, if it be     on their side of the question.  What
is printed on the other side could not profit them, for they do not read it.
It is too old-fashioned. Or, they read it only by their improved lights.
Had our churches fallen into the snare thus laid for them, their "progress," by this time, could only have been measured by a galvanic
standard.   They  would have become spiritual to the last degree of
"odylic force."  They would have been able to "swallow camels," till the
reign of pharisaism had become absolute and universal. Wonderful
5 
50
appeal to their unfailing dogma, - the hard-ridden
hobby that bears them through all the vicissitudes of
their crusade, - that slavery, being necessarily evil,
and the parent of all abominations, must, of course, be
abhorrent to the mind of God,- which, however, is
nothing to their purpose, since it begs the question in
dispute. Our reviewer is not unskilled in these tactics of controversial warfare. But it would have
been more satisfactory to unprejudiced inquirers, that
he should rather have shown the unsoundness of his
adversary's principles of reasoning, or the falseness
of its elements, or the defectiveness of its process, or
the inconsequence of its conclusions, or its inconsistency, in general, with other admitted verities of
Scripture, and the teachings of experience. This
would have been their array of'shining cups and platters.'  What these
vessels, "clean" on the outside, would have contained, must be imagined.
In like manner philology, and other sciences equally complaisant and
pliable, have undertaken to instruct us in respect to cosmological interpretation. Our theorists have found Moses as accommodating in respect to
physics, as to ethics and theology: and they have accordingly felt themselves at liberty to make and unmake, as well as to carry on worlds, at
their own pleasure. An expert, with aid of pen and ink, may construct
a world, or a system, in less than six days, and all very good. Or, Moses
is understood to be indifferent whether worlds were created at all,
provided a Divinity be acknowledged ready to arrange the material
eternally furnished to his plastic hand. It may yet be proved that he
believed in no Divinity at all. Humanity, of course, will then be entirely
disenthralled, and may have a free course unto perfection, - when worlds,
systems, minds, and whatever else has heretofore been imagined within the
circles of existence, will be revolved into- one great IDEA. 
51
had been far better than to have made merely
collateral issues, and supported them by questionable
interpretations, unnatural inferences, groundless assumptions, invidious references, and partisan appeals.
But what he has done, with some show of reason,
is a proper subject of analysis and criticism.
1. The reviewer, in his published article, does not
take the common ground of objectors, that the curse
of Noah was a mere drunken and vindictive imprecation.  He is too reverent for that.  He admits that it
was, in some sense, prophetic. But he denies that
the conduct of Ham was, in any sense, representative, or that his descendants were, in any way, inmplicated in it.  The denial is unqualified and unsustained. Of course, it amounts to a mere expression
of the writer's opinion. But it is incredible, because
the prophetic curse was pronounced in view of the
offence of Ham.  IHis crime alone figured in the
prophet's mind.  That, and nothing else, is intimated
as the ground of the malediction. The crime and
the curse have been followed, through all periods, by
the predicted judgments upon the family of Ham,
and consequent enlargements of Shem and Japheth.
The church has, consequently, always acknowfedged
this plenary evidence of the Divine justice and
veracity, and the world has been restrained, more or
less, by the terrible admonition. In view of these
facts, the reviewer's mere opinion is worthless.  In 
52
view of corresponding analogies of the Divine governnent, it is worse; for one might with equal and
similar reason, according to the speculative theology
out of which most of these novelties have proceeded,
deny that Adam was the representative of mankind
in general; that the entail of toil and sweat, pain,
sickness, and death, was declared, and has been
executed as the penalty of the first transgression;that the crucifiers of Christ represented the nation
of the Jews; or that their consequent overthrow and
dispersion were the ordained infliction of the curse
which they imprecated upon themselves and upon
their children; - or that the sanction of the fifth
commandment has any virtue by which social prosperity becomes the reward of filial piety, and the
earth is contrarily cursed with the shortlived and
pestilent generations of such as dishonor their father
and their mother. Such similitudes, of which sacred
and profane records are full, must go for nothing,
exponents though they are of a principle which God
has written, as with a sunbeam, on the sky. We
must forget the old family Bible, and the catechism,
and go, for our learning, to socialistic communions,
cosmopolitan theories, and mesmeric revelatrons.
We  must take our risks of being bewildered in
a labyrinth of sophistries and follies, from which
the shattered intellect will presently be unable, even
if we would, to find deliverance. 
53
2. That our reviewer is already in such a danger
appears from his objection that'"the prophetic announcement of an impending curse was made with
exclusive reference to Canaan, including, of course,
his posterity to some limited extent." The evident
implication here is, that the iniquity of the father
was visited upon the children in their generations,
though the visitation was restricted to a single line,
and limited in duration.  Be it so: but then what
becomes of the previous denial that the children
were implicated at all in the bad conduct of their
father; or that any relation of stated antecedent and
consequent existed between the crime of the one
and the punishment of the other? Our author
surrenders his own  principle.  His objections neutralize each other.
But how knows he that Canaan and his posterity
were alone in the suffering of the curse? There is
no evidence that Canaan was yet born when Noah
pronounced  the  malediction.   The  offended  sire
looked only upon the son who had dishonored him.
HIe would naturally apply to him the epithet most
significant of his general character, and the quality
of his  particular  misdemeanor.   That  particular
offence spoke for itself. His general character had
been indicated before by his intermarriage with the
accursed race of Cain, laying a foundation, as it did,
for the social evils which would thence naturally
5* 
54
ensue upon the repeopled earth. Did Noah want an
epithet to denote the. whole? Canaan was the word.
It signified, after the idiom of those times, the Cainish propensities, the Cainish associations, the Cainish
act, and the Cainish influence of his ungodly son.
Canaan was the proper denominator of the tainted
blood that should infect so many of the future
inhabitants of the world.- Or, if it were that Noah
had in mind that particular son of Hanm who should
bear the name of Canaan, at a future day, yet,
possibly, only because Canaan would inherit most of
his parent's qualities, and be signalized, not exclusively,
but emphatically, as deserving of the curse. Learned
men have been divided upon these interpretations;
and more have followed those great authorities- the
Arabic and Septuagint translators, -who supply an
idiomatic ellipsis, and read "the father of Canaan,"
as in other verses of the same chapter. Of these
and other renderings, the inquiries of Presbyter would
have opened to the reviewer probabilities at least as
valuable as his unsupported assertion ill denial of
them all. - But, however, they are all of no consequence in reference to the question in dispute. For,
if' Canaan only and his posterity to some extent'
were in the condemnation, the Divine right of
slavery is thereby established. God, by his prophet,
entails upon some  descendants of Ham  servitude.
But servitude implies mastership, and is impossible 
55
without it. If there be slaves, or God's will cannot
be done, and his word must fail, there must be slaveholders also, by equal reason;  and, if slaveholding
be necessarily a sin, then God imposes a necessity
upon some good men of sinning, in executing his
righteous judgments upon some bad men; - which
is absurd. We reject that absurd conclusion, and
adjudge the slaveholder, like all other officers of the
Divine government, guilty, not for his formal act by
which he executes a Divine decree, but for the
spirit by which he abuses his trust to the indulgence
of his malignant passions. Otherwise he honors God,
and is a benefactor of society. If Slhemn and Japheth
necessarily sin in  executing  the prophetic curse,
where is the blessing of their filial piety, and what
encouragement has any mar to copy it?
3. The reviewer also objects that "the curse of
Canaan was long ago exhausted, partly, when the
Canaanites were subdued by the Israelites, and, completely, when the remnants of the tribes in Canaan
fell under the dominion of the Romans." If it were
so, it would be nothing to his purpose. It would
prove not that slavery is wrong, but that having
answered its providential design, in respect t that
particular family, it naturally ceased; or that, because
they could not be reclaimed by discipline, a heavier
judgment had come upon them in their destruction.
But the reviewer's opinion is without foundation. 
56
It has not even a probable support. The evidence is
on the other side. For, how was the curse exhausted?
By express limitation in the prophecy itself? Not at
all. That stands equally related to Shem and Japhet
in their generations. It emphatically points to the
enlargement of Japheth, after he should take possession of the tents of Shem.   As  Shem, in his
probationary period, so Japheth in his period, is tho
prophetic master of his sinning brother; and Japheth
still rules the world. Was it limited by any subsequent revelations? Not at all; but is continually
recognized in Scripture down to the time of Christ.
The New Testament confirms it, and directs masters
and slaves how to behave, in their respective spheres,
till the day of the Lord. Was it limited by the
destruction of its victims on the part of the Jews
and Romans? Not at all: for the histories relate that
the exterminated Canaanites fled, in all directions, to
the wilds of Africa, and, as evidence is not wanting,
with their Cainish mark upon them. They spread
themselves over the vast regions of that burning
country, built great cities, made great wars, enslaved
one another; and what else they did, and what they
have become, the world is finding out by every mew
discovery. Down to the fourth century the Africans
referred their origin to the Canaanites, and made
that origin still more evident by their vile behavior.
There they have lived, and, with such beautiful 
57
exceptions as God is wont to make among the most
degraded of mankind have followed the pattern of
their obscene and impious progenitor. There his sin
has found them out, and Japheth has taken possession
of his inheritance. He will hold it while he dwells
in the tents of Shem,    till Jerusalem, in the filness
of time, shall become the seat of universal government, and the Abrahamic covenant shall be fulfilled,
in giving all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory
of them, to The Non of David.
With what spirit, and for what ends, and in what
manner, Japheth uses his ordained prerogative, he
must take good heed, or from his Nebuchadnezzar
heights of secular enlargement, and material civilization, he will fall to a brutish level. It is possible
that he should so build his Babylon as to provoke
heavier judgments than those of old, and that, for
the abuse of the "slaves and souls of men" that are
found in it, with other countless varieties of lawful
but prostituted merchandise, it should be cast like a
great millstone into the sea,- that prophetic symbol
of popular revolution, anarchy, and destruction.
But, equally in the righteous ordinance of slavery,
and in the overthrow  of the guilty nation who
pervert it to evil, or abolish it, instead of making it
subservient to its design, God will establish the
veracity of his word, and vindicate the integrity of
his moral government.   "Is there unrighteousness 
58
with God? God forbid! Yea, let God be true, but
every man be made a liar." And this great lesson
of the Scripture should be well studied in reference
to the superstition of the South, and the fanaticism
of the more erring North, which otherwise in their
violent reciprocal repulsion, may meet on the other
side, to dash one another in pieces. Dark, in this
respect, is the problem of the future. Old men
should not be scorned because they are afraid; and
young men should not too confidently reckon upon
their ability to arrest the laws of nature, and roll
back the tide of providence. But ministers of the
Gospel should take care how they place themselves,
in reference to the threatening conflict of these
exasperated  earthly  forces.   The  propagators  of
Christianity should  look  out.   There  are  grave
questions occasionally before them that ought not to
be decided at a late hour of the night.*
But, in respect to this question of the Scripture
authority of slavery, our reviewer would have been
* Allusion is made above to the action of the AMERICAX  BOARD OF
CO'-fISSION'ERS FOR FOR EIGN MissioNs - at its meeting in 1854on the Choctaw question. Great interests were then put in great jeopardy.
Even that dignified and excellent body - a tower of popular strengthcould not bear many such shocks as it then received by the vote of the
majority. The question now sleeps. But it will awake for other discussions, and, it is to be hoped, for different judgments.  Whenever the
time comes, many will be urgent that the voices of such men as then constituted- the minority of the Board, may not be heard in vain. 
59
more likely to convince others, if lie had been better
able to convince himself.  Zealous though he be, he
is evidently but half persuaded in his own mind.
The difficulties of Scripture trouble him, as they
have troubled so many of his school, and tasked all
their ingenuity of interpretation. For example;he touches very softly upon the servants of Abraham - the representative of the patriarchal economy, - as ini some sense obtained by money, yet not
as the patriarch's slaves, but  11"'s people;"  or, if
bought, yet not sold by him; or, if bought and sold,
yet not "in the American sense;"  and  not in the
American sense, because that would prove the father
of the faithful to have been preeminently wicked,
which, though possible, and, on the reviewer's principles, certain, if he were a slaveholder, yet is not the
character in which it is most natural to contemplate
that venerable man.  Such expedients indicate that
our author feels a pressure, and seeks relief by
changes of position; as when one would shift a
burden from one shoulder to the other, or transfer it
to his arms, or carry it in his hand, or place it on the
next conveyance, as the exigency should require.
But none of these expedients are, ultimately9 to his
purpose; for, when we inquire how this money of
the patriarch was applied, it appears not to have been
in the form of wages to the servants, but of price to
their former masters.  Being, consequently, thlence 
60
forth, the property of their new owner, it is of no
consequence whether they be called his slaves, or
"his people."  A  mere name, though  technically
convenient, affects nothing in respect to principle.
Or, if it be admitted that Abraham never sold his
slaves, that also is not material; for, if he bought,
another must have sold, and his right to buy involves
another's right to sell, so that between the two contracting parties the principle is established. Or, if these
"people " were not slaves " in the Amnericans sense," that
also touches not the issue; for the only question
here is whether they were slaves at all? Presbyter is
not aware that there is any American, or other accidental sense of slavery, that affects the essential
validity of the relation, which is simply referable to
the will of God, is independent of all geographical,
political, and philosophical considerations whatsoever,
and irrespective of the moral character of the parties
concerned in it, except as, in particular cases, they
are decreed, upon regular judicial process, to have
violated their obligations, and thereby forfeited their
rights.  But such exceptional cases,or any supposable
multiplication of them, that should turn the exception into the rule, would not touch the system' of
slavery, but its abuses by wicked men;  and any
consequent judicial process could not rightfully abolish the system, but their particular connection with it.
Nor could these abuses properly bear the stigma of 
61
Amnerican, for they belong not  necessarily  to the
country more than to the system, but to human
nature; and, though described justly, after the manner
of the reviewer, by the stealing, maiming, shooting, or
burning of the slaves, could not be limited to time or
place, for these and similar atrocities have been committed by bad men in all ages and countries of the
world. Such barbarities were, in fact, contemplated,
beforehand, by God himself, in his giving of the law,
and the  proper  punishments were  prescribed;
which clearly indicated his will that  the  system
itself, at all these fearful hazards, or rather, in his
certain knowledge of such resulting incidental evils,
should be maintained.   So that slavery, in distinction from its abuses, stands in Scripture; and he who
would abolish it, without a warrant, or while the
natural reasons for it continue, violates an ordinance
of God.  He may be a good man, and sincere; but
he mistakes his calling. He is blinded by an idol;
and he propagates his idolatry at a risk which, in his
bewilderment, he could not reckon, of the safety of
the State. That so many good men should be so
committed, as now, inconsiderately, to such delusions,
and feel themselves, consequently, obliged to give
popular currency to their mistakes and fallacies,
constitutes the greatest of our public dangers.
III. THE TEST:- The Law of Love.
"God is love! "   a remarkable affirmation of the
6
* 
62
Scripture; and its meaning is remarkable.  We look
for it, by distinguishing the subject from its qualities.
God is not called holiness, or justice, or goodness, or
truth. These are his attributes. His essence, so far
as declared to us, is love; and these attributes are
modes of its manifestation to his creatures. They
are its objective forms exhibited in his government of
the world. Love has no adjective but a participial,
which represents the exercise of all the Divine attributes in glorious harmony. It is the simple, indivisible, indefinable, incomprehensible denominator of
the Father of all.
"The end of the commandment is love."  Natural
and revealed religion is the fruit and expression of
this Divine principle, intended to bind men to God
and to one another.  The  vinculu7in is love, not of
constraint, but of attraction and affinity. Religion
flows out of this incomprehensible spirit, and returns
to it. Love constitutes, essentially, its binding power.
It is its test, and the test of every ordinance and
institution that claim the sanction of its authority.
Hereby we know them. All things are referable to
this only true and absolute standard of virtue. All
real, in distinction from formal and apparent virtue,
consists in it, and is measured by it. Without it, all
forms are void, and all apparent excellence is but "as
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." All mechanisms.
and organizations are good or bad only as they are
A 
.1
63
moved by this vital spring, or by hate its opposite.
It is the test of slavery. If slavery cannot stand its
criticism, it is the greatest of social evils, and should
be destroyed. How, when, by whom, are questions
of prudence and expediency that would require the
greatest wisdom. But it ought to be destroyed. If
those to whom its destruction naturally, or by express
Divine appointment, belonged, should refiuse to destroy
it, they would be themselves destroyed. Love itself
would destroy them; for love is the greatest of all
destroyers when it meets the resisting antagonism
of hate, - as the subtle lifegiving caloric sometimes
upheaves the solid earth, and lays waste its cities.
"God is love."  But "God is a consuming fire."  "A
fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies
round about;" - always a fire of love, but objectively
displayed in executing judgment and justice upon
those whom his wisdom could not convince, nor his
holiness awe, nor his goodness soften.   It is the
terrible proof of the evil of all sin and transgression,
which are not abstractions and mere conceptions, but
characteristics of voluntary and accountable beings,
that they are contrary to the infinitely loving God,
and that their subjection, restraint, and punishment
are required in vindication of his holy sovereignty.
The account of this, as revealed by religion, and
which, as it could not otherwise have been reasoned
out, ambitious naturalism, in all its types, rejects, is 
64
that God having this infinite perfection as a moral governor, the only worthy end of his government is the
manifestation of his own glory. The happiness of
creatures who are infinitely below him, and dependent upon him, could not, as mere humanitarianism
and philanthropy propose, be his end, but only a
stated consequence of their being like him, having
complacency in him, and reflecting his glorious perfections.  If we  suppose a world to fall from its
allegiance to him, his infinite love of excellence, and
his great end of thereby making himself illustrious,
would, from the necessity of the case, repel the fallen,
and his complacency in them could be restored only
upon the'ir recovery to virtue. The goodness of his
nature might compassionately prevent their greater
relapse and misery, by providential restraint and
discipline. It might suggest expedients for effecting
their return, and give them a probation. But if, in
the exercise of their evil affections, the will -the
exponent and executor of these affections- still
refused the overtures of his compassion, his infinite
love of virtue would more repel them, and the separation, if the probation were fruitless, would necessarily
be eternal; unless we should inconsistently resort to
materialism, and deny the immortality of the soul.
In other words, God's infinite love is his complacency
in those infinite attributes of wisdom, power, holiness,
justice, goodness, and truth which constitute his mani 
65
fested character as a moral governor, and in all those
creatures of his who bear and reflect his image.
Whatever crosses these infinite attributes is necessarily contrary to his ends and purposes of government, and love itself in and by which they essentially consist, must necessarily oppose, restrain, and
punish it. Else moral distinctions are annihilated,
our moral nature vanishes, and the very idea of a
personal God and sovereign is a chimera.
Now this world is thus fallen. Natural and revealed
religion presupposes this fact, and starts out from it.
The systems of natural and revealed religion are the
account of God's government over it as fallen, guilty,
condemned, yet reprieved, susceptible -of being
restrained and  limited  in its wickedness,  and  of
restitution, if God so please, and when, and how he
pleases, through Jesus Christ, "the propitiation for
our sins."  Its absolute death, or that of any part of
it - a death to all hope of such restitution - occurs
only when the means provided for its benefit are
ultimately refused, and the stated probationary period
expires. These systems are the expression of Divine
love; and love is honored as well in their sanctions
of punishment as of reward, since God's end' in his
creation and government of the world, is not the
happiness of his creatures, but his own glory in the
manifestation of his perfections; and their happiness
is only conditional upon their conformity to God, and
6* 
66
a stated consequence of it. Speculations about the
origin of evil cannot be admitted at all into our
reasonings, since that subject is utterly beyond our
faculties, and God has given us no information upon
it, nor a clue to guide us. Whatever be the true
account of it, it could not be supposed to affect injuriously the Divine character; for that, upon the
admission of a God, would be absurd. It would be
equally absurd on the principles of atheism; for if
there be not a God, the Divine character is not a
subject of reasoning at all. But, evil certainly existing,- a matter of consciousness, experience, and
revelation,- and impossible, without atheism, to be
denied, the Godhead is equally dishonored, and we
go to atheism only by another road, if we admit not
his love of excellence as engaged to restrain and
punish it, and to prevent its unnecessary inroads upon
his general system.
Whatever reasons exist, then, in natural and
revealed religion, for the institution of civil government, and for domestic slavery as an important
modification of it, for the more effectual restraint
and discipline of imbecile and wicked men, prove it
to be consistent with the Divine love, and required
by it for the ends of God's moral providence. Those
reasons are not invalidated by the law of love, and
cannot be, since they are the simple account which
religion gives us of God's way of governing the fallen 
67
world for the ends of his infinite benevolence. So
far as slavery consists of punishment, and so far as it
consists of discipline, it equally magnifies the Divine
benevolence, and allthose related attributes of God
by which his love is manifested in the general ordering of this revolted scene. There is, as we have seen,
no a priori reason why God should not ordain a state
of slavery, as well as other varieties of restraint
and discipline which all but virtual atheists acknowledge, and of which many are, in their nature, more
severe, and more fatal to the happiness of the suffering parties, and, actually, not less but more terrible in
their abuse by tyrannical and wicked men. There
are conceivable and probable reasons as we have also
seen, why he should ordain it, as things are in their
present disturbed and disjointed state.   There is,
moreover, the evidence above detailed, that he has
actually ordained it. To question and oppose it,
therefore, on any merely philosophical and speculative grounds, or politically, as malevolent, destructive
of happiness, contrary to the rights of man, or
inconsistent with our ideas of the natural progress
and destiny of society, is to criticize by an infinitely
unworthy standard, and incur the risks of that fatal
plunge which so many wise men and whole nations
have taken into atheistic unbelief. He who would
prove that slavery is inconsistent with the Divine
benevolence, must first prove that the world is not in 
68
that fallen state which the institution presupposes
and implies; that there are no such reasons for it in
the actual condition of things, as it professes, and
makes its acknowledged ground  and that there is no
such proof of its ordinance in natural and revealed
religion, as it sets forth.   All other objections, in
respect to principle, are merely conceptional, fiotional,
and of no value; and, however speciously glossed, or
eloquently discussed, or triumphantly paraded, affect
not the merits of the question. The practical objections, though of far greater moment, and such as
ought to move all good men to the reformation of
existing evils, yet invalidate not the ordinance itself.
If such evils were indefinitely multiplied, till universal
discord and revolution should ensue, through the
exasperated passions of mankind, that would be
simply analogous to what has often happened to the
best natural institutions of earth, and even to the
church itself, whose Divine right, and their consistency with the law of love, have nevertheless been
admitted, except by professed atheists and infidels, in
every age. Such irregularities prove nothing but the
wickedness of mankind. But that wickedness makes
more evident the necessity of those very institutions
which, as yet, through the imperfection of the parties
concerned in them, have been but partially able to
restrain it. It justifies the Divine wisdom in ordaining them, and the judgments consequent upon their
unfaithful administration. 
69
To one whose mind has dwelt long only upon such
bad administrations, and whose warm imagination
has exaggerated them, till they fill the whole circle of
his vision, it is not surprising that views like these
should seem, as they do to our excellent reviewer,
"mere mysticism and conjecture."  It is not to be
expected that such persons, especially if the religious
sense has followed the direction of the sympathies
and passions, should be able, at once, to separate
slavery, or any similar institution, from the revolting
accidents with which it has been familiarly associated
in their excited minds. It might even seem to them
a loss of virtue to abate their zeal by looking away
from scenes of wrong and suffering which keep alive
their generous emotions, to what they regard as
metaphysical abstractions serving only to confuse the
intellect, and harden the heart. Presbyter is aware
at what disadvantage he writes, in this respect, in
shlowing the consistency of slavery, - even in regard
to its merely necessary ills, - with the law of love.  It
is as if one should argue upon the principles of life
and health, or the benevolent genius of the healing
art, with sensitive, but hitherto inexperienced children,
in the hospitals of the Crimea, overcome with shTuddering, as they would be, at the amputation of shattered
limbs, and the probing of gaping wounds. To them
the surgeon would seem but as a monster, and sisters
of charity but as incarnate fiends. They would be 
70
sensible to nothing but the shrieks or imprecations of
the tortured subjects, and refer them only to the
quick touches of the loving operators. The teacher
must be content to wait till the paroxysms of affection'ate, but wounded sensibility, were over, and
longer observation and more careful reflection, or an
actual experience, should make his metaphysics better
understood. It is so, and by a like reason, that Sinai
and Calvary themselves, where, to the morbid natural
eye, love is hidden behind the severities of justice,
are invested only with terrors, till their sublime
rationale is opened to the awakened and inquiring
spirit. These, and such like deep things of God, are
truly known only as a Divinely enlightened experience unfolds them. Otherwise God seems but as a,
hard master to be propitiated, an enemy to be
resisted, an oppressor to be overthrown.
However, there are practical illustrations of this
invidiously called mysticism which even children can
understand. Our reviewer inadvertently suggests a
striking instance; namely, the loving intercourse
sometimes subsisting between master sand slaves in
the patriarchal age. A touching account he gives of
Abraham's "people."  "They were married, and with
their children were incorporated into his great family,
and all the males were in the same way dedicated to
the service of his and their covenant God.  Unprotected by any government, he, with his wife  and 
71
immense flocks and herds, was safe under the guardianship of these faithful men, though surrounded by
heathen tribes, and often removing from place to
place. In arms they followed him, and rescued Lot
out of the hands of the hostile kings who were carrying him away captive. One of them was intrusted
with the delicate task of procuring from abroad -a wife
for Isaac, and if Abraham died childless, was to have
been his heir.* They were Abraham's people, and
looked up to him not as their oppressor, but as their
common friend." - This instance, which is the author's
own, though there had never been another, would
have been fatal to his theory that slavery is necessarily inconsistent with the law of love. It is a
remarkable exemplification of that law. It represents slavery practically according to its Divine
idea,-'mercy and truth meeting together, righteousness and peace embracing each other.'
But it is not alone. There have been children of
Abraham, holden in the covenant, from his day to
the present, and there will be to the end of time,
standing in the same magisterial relation, and exercis
* This is the same who said to Laban in urging his masters suit; -
"The Lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great: and
he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-slaves
and maid-slaves, and camels, and asses."  Gen. 24:  35.- That faithful
slave seems not to have been an abolitionist. But the new lights had not
then risen. 
72
ing it with the same spirit.  Christianity supposes
this in its manifold precepts to this very class of
persons; and the religion of Christ is not less fitted to
sanctify the relation, than was the dispensation under
which the virtuous patriarchs honored God. Bad as
the Christian world has become, worse than the
Jewish, because of its abuse of a greater light, God
has not left it, and he will not leave it. In the darkest times he will have a remnant to carry out his
purposes to the end of the age; and, for their sakes,
his judgments will be stayed, and the day of vengeance will be shortened. Those excited'men who
cannot appreciate the many honorable examples in
our own country, as they are represented not merely
by such corrected observers as Dr. Adams, but by
slaves themselves who must be supposed to know,
may be very honest and sincere, but their eyes are
holder. They see not what it most concerns them
to understand, if they would be wise and patriotic
men; and their blunder may be even more injurious
to their country than to themselves. It dishonors
Christ; for it dishonors the many Christian masters
and Christian slaves, whose familiar habits of life, if
they were better understood, would be seen to bear
no remote resemblance to the Abrahamic pattern.
There are virtuous and honorable men, not a few, and
ministers of the Gospel, whose very slaveholding is
carried on, against their convenience and tastes, if 
73
not their interest, from mere motives of Christian
charity.  They are weary of a burden which, nevertheless, they bear patiently for the public good. In
every slaveholding State and city there are doubtless
more than enough to have saved Sodoin, who are
neither " evidences of the deplorable frailty of human
nature," nor "examples of warning." They are not
even indiscreet, as some have asserted of our Lord,
when, at Cana of Galilee, he was blind to the wisdom
of a more enlightened age, and turned the water into
wine;- the loving Christ himself, forgetful of his
high commission, and giving the authority of his
Divine example to an institution destructive of the
happiness of mankind! We rebuke such profane criticism, to whatever subject it is applied. We accept
not the pharisaism which so interprets all things
by its shallow, outside, and vain-glorious philosophy, till it generates, unconsciously, a wild fanaticism,
its block-head crazed by the dyspeptic vapors of its
crude progenitor, ambitious of nothing but to scatter
firebrands, and drive its smoking chariot over an
incapable because then demented people.
"But wisdom  is justified of all her children."
Christ was well understood by the wise of his own
time, to be neither a gluttonous man, nor a winebibber, and no otherwise a friend of publicans and
sinners than as he did not denounce them to a swift
destruction, but ate and  drank with  them, as  a
7 
74
heavenly messenger, for their good, and the good of
their households with them. As to what his pharisaical accusers judged he gave himself no concern.
Why should he? Or why should his disciples after
him? Prejudice and passion will see nothing as it is,
and understand nothing; but the greater the truth
the more violent will be their resistance to it, and the
more wrathful their condemnation of those whose
opposite principles and motives they cannot comprehend. We must keep on our way, and wait till the
heat subsides, and the flurry is over.  Such excitements will have their course, and their end, though
it be in spasms and revolutions. They should not
turn true men from a better purpose; for explosions
are better than the sacrifice of righteous principles;
and a general catastrophe is not so great an evil as
the regal instalment of atheistic folly. Truth may
fall, but it can never die; or, if it die, it will have a
better resurrection.   God's government will stand,
somehow, though all the winds and waves beat
against it; and he will carry it on, through all adversities, till he has put all things under him. Its order
cannot be reversed. He made the world as he did,
and not otherwise, to please himself; and he regtilates
and medicates its disordered constitution agreeably to
his own counsels, and not the notions of his fallen
creatures. We cannot make that straight which he has
made crooked. The leopard will be spotted, and the 
75
Ethiopian will be black, in spite of us. What things
he has constituted unequal we cannot make equal if
we try; but we increase the inequality by our mad
attempts, even if we are not destroyed ourselves by
the reaction. There is less love than wisdom in the
experiment; and it will fall as much through its disguised selfishness as folly. Beautiful it would seem
to have a state of universal equality and brotherhood.
But a community, after the best pattern of cosmopolitan ingenuity, breaks up by its mere expansion, or a
more inglorious collapse.  It does not hold together
long enough  for death to cover the shame of its
projectors. The fabric of all reform, whether philosophical, or political, or both, without an indwelling
Christ, is but a child's plaything. It lasts but while
he builds it; and the topstone that he lays with
shoutings, sinks the whole fabric into ruins. What
becomes, then, of the conceited and noisy architect,
though he be a child of larger growth, and his edifice
be a capitol? If he rears it with the materials of his
previously demolished habitation, his last state is
worse than his first, and his ultimate discomfort is
only exceeded by the intoxication that produced it.
If our better philanthropists, fired, as they are always
likely to become, at length, by a political mania,
should overturn the social fabric because of the
necessary toil and sweat that compact and sustain
it, or the unnecessary oppressions and cruelties that 
76
bad men wantonly inflict within it, what would come
next? They would be the first to beg for an iron
despotism, to save the things that remained from an
absolute destruction. What revolutionism becomes,
upon the mere instincts, or speculative fancies, even
of well meaning and Christian men, history has given
sufficient warning, if experience could ever make
such imaginative people wise. Let them follow, if
they will, the spirit that drives them on; but let
them not call it-  love!  Not such was the pattern
of the loving Christ.
Our philosophers of oracular instincts, and Divine
speculative ideas, should be more considerate of things
actual and experimental, not as they would. have
them, but as God ordains them. It is idle to affect a
wisdom, or a love, greater than he has manifested in
his system of the world; or to imagine that we can
best honor him by reversing the analogies of nature,
and the corresponding teachings of the Scripture.
It is not a false science that describes his works in
their respective genera, species, varieties, orders,
individuals; nor a spurious charity that is pleased
when these perform the offices of their respective
spheres, each in its own diversity, but all together so
as to produce a general harmony. We could not
make a better constitution. We should be likely, by
our intermeddling, to stop the movement of the whole.
"If the whole body were an eye, where were the
0 
77
hearing? if the whole were hearing, where were the
smelling? But now hath God set the members every
one of them in the body as it hath pleased him. If
they were all one member, where were the body?"
Our philosophers would not have us require of others
what we would not willingly perform ourselves; nor
perform ourselves what, according to their ideas of
equality, others have no prerogative to require of
us; - but run away, and steal, and kill that we may
run. It were better that their love should constrain
them to entertain the fugitives, and divide with them
the domestic hearth.   If they did not then more
commend their theories, they would better test their
sincerity, and probably sooner learn to bring their
theory and practice into a more natural correspondence.  Frequent visits of the "angels" would, at least,
oblige them to be more conversant with the realities
of life, and imagination would give place to a more
corrected judgment, in respect to the constituted
relations of the social state.
We are slow to learn the lesson, amidst the confusions incident to the present state of things, but
it is plain enough when  understood, -that  true
charity consists not in doing what is impossible, or
destructive, but what is for another's welfare in the
sphere where  God has placed him.   To  abandon
that beautiful simplicity, for the sake of reducing all
the spheres to one diameter, and all the diameters to
7* 
78
a point, is undoubtedly more magnificent and imposing, according to a speculative standard; it is
romantic and heroic, and figures most where an ambitious spirit, that could not otherwise be honored,
delights to open its noisy theatres, and dignify its prospective triumphs. But it saves nothing. It feeds
not the hungry, nor clothes the naked, nor comforts
the afflicted. They perish by generations, while the
gaudy vision tarries; and their aggravated wrongs
and miseries cry out, at length, against the insane
projectors of a fanciful salvation. We can relieve
them, if we will, while they remain in their several
appointed places, under  the general "bondage of
corruption," and possibly, now and then, lift them to
a nearer equality with our own; but we cannot
remove the curse of sin. He only can do that whose
righteous law inflicted the curse, and whose word is
pledged to produce, by and by, a new  creation.
Meanwhile it is our probation to improve, and not to
overturn, the present state; to save, one by one,
whom God puts within our reach, by active kindness,
and not the whole, in mass, by bold resolves and
frothy declamations; to give help to the perishing,
and joy to the stricken and withered heart, ant not
call down fire from heaven that would destroy the
hovel equally with the palace, and desolate the fields
that otherwise would have yielded food for all. From
those ashes what would grow?   What  would  our 
79
reformers have? They would abolish and destroy.
What substitute would they produce? They speak
great swelling words of an expected better state, but
they define it not.   Let them present their plan.
Let us have the consummate project of their dream.
Let their New Jerusalem come down out of heaven.
Let their city in the clouds descend, that we may see
its stately bulwarks, and consider its palaces; that we
may walk its golden streets, and drink of its crystal
river, and rejoice in its glorious temple that hath no
need of the sun or the moon to shine in it. Surely
their laboring mountain ought, by this time, to. bring
forth at least, -  a scheme, if not for the regeneration
of the world, yet of these ends of it which they are
turning upside down.
IV. COROLLARIES.
If slavery, as argued  above, be  an ordinance of
God, according to natural and revealed religion, and
if it be consistent with that Divine love in which all
religion essentially consists, it follows:   1. That all contrary suppositions, theories, and
interpretations must be false, wherever the fallacy
lies; since the will of God, and not human imaginations and conceits, is the supreme law of the world; -
that they are not less false because they have captivated so large portions of society, in different periods,
and have become inwrought, so extensively, into the
affairs of social, political, and ecclesiastical life; since 
80
no numbers or combinations of men can annul or
alter a Divine constitution;-and that this fallacy
would not be less but more destructive, should it be
entertained by the Church and State in general, or
the greater part of them, and work out, consistently,
civil revolution, or the abolition of slavery throughout
the country, or the world; since questions of right
and wrong cannot be settled by majorities, and the
Divine government cannot be superseded; but all
such attempts react, sooner or later, and in ways
incomprehensible, beforehand, to the greater confusion
and ultimate loss of the misguided people; - as all
history confirms.
2. That we mnay reasonably look for the fallacy in
that specious humanitarian philosophy which, according to its respective types, and periods, and degrees
denies, ignores, diminishes, or travesties those facts of
natural and revealed religion which slavery presupposes, and in view of which it was instituted by God;
namely, - the fallen, depraved, imbecile, disordered,
and condemned state of the world requiring the
ordinance for the better restraint, discipline, and
correction of bad men, and of some more than others;
and for the better preservation of society in general,
during its probationary state; - a philosophy which,
contrarily, dignifies the sinful nature of man as capable, without such restraint and discipline, of working
out for itself, in a state of liberty, independence, and 
81
equality, personal and public prosperity and happiness;- a philosophy which accordingly substitutes
the natural sentiments, sympathies, tastes, volitions,
purposes, and resolves of the human mind for supernatural grace; or puts the latter in subserviency to
the former; or both out of their due relation and
proportion  to each  other; -a philosophy  which,
virtually affirming the related natural ability and
perfectibility of the race, proposes corresponding
educational, social, political, and ecclesiastical organizations, for the fuller and freer development of these
alleged natural powers, and, by the interaction and
reciprocal influence of such natural powers and corresponding institutions, to recover society from  its
disturbances and irregularities, and settle it in a state
of general intelligence, refinement, thrift, and happiness; -  a philosophy which, according to its different
degrees, accepts the Divine word but as a product of
assisted human faculties, without the plenary inspiration of God, or as a mere  complement  to human
wisdom, and subject to its criticism and interpretation as a standard of judgment and belief; or which
wholly rejects the Scripture, and, in its stead, exalts
the inspirations of human genius, the outfow of
human sympathies, the impulse of human instincts,
or the directory of the human conscience, or mingles
these all in indescribable confusion, as a guide of
life;- a philosophy which makes human happiness 
82
the end of living, and productiveness of happiness
the criterion of virtue; which holds nature and art,
politics and legislation, trade and commerce, literature, science, and religion, subservient to these vain
ideas, impressing its own character insensibly upon existing civilizations, as material or intellectual, and not
spiritual; as esthetical, and not moral; formal, and
not vital; or fanatical, and not devout; - a philosophy
which produces mechanisms without vitality; inflation
without growth; activity without strength;  profession without principle; combinations without fellowship; vaunting without accomplishment; magnificence without dignity; and honor without virtue;a philosophy which glories in all these formalities and
appearances, as the product of its own ingenuity and
skill, and glorifies not that God "Of whom, and
through whom, and to whom are all things." It is of
the earth, earthly; and it perishes with the earth.
3. That the anti-slavery movement in general,
being a remarkable phenomenon of modern times,
if it be inconsistent, as argued above, with natural
and revealed religion, muzt.st be referred to the prevalence of this false philosophy, since this, and no other
known cause, is adequate to so remarkable an
effect; -that such a reference of it is not, as pretended by the reviewer, "mere mysticism, conjecture,
and unwarrantable assumption," because such a philosophy certainly exists; because it has a certain 
83
history from an early period of Christianity; because
it has had, all along, diverse commentators and propagandists who have infused it into the theology,
ethics, and legislation of all periods; because its
various expounders, apologists, and adversaries may
be read, if they are not, by all men; because, in this
country, and in its relations to theology, Jonathan
Edwards is known to have refuted it; because, nevertheless, it has been, ever since, in different forms,
having a free course, while Jonathan Edwards is wellnigh forgotten, or his meaning is interpreted out of
him, and his views of the question now in hand are
well-nigh suppressed; because the cause and the
effect have a natural congruity and relationship to
each other, and are actually found to coexist in the
same minds, institutions, and communities, flowing out
in the same channels, with similar and reciprocal
influences and results, as, on a smaller scale, in many
past periods of history;- and, furthermore, that this
account is sufficient, and is an adequate, and the only
possible account of the related moral, social, and
political phenomena which are now occurring among
the civilized and half-civilized nations in general, distracted, as they are, by these Utopian ideas and
vainly attempting, in disregard of Scripture and
experience, to improve their bad conditions, not by
converting individual men, according to the Gospel,
but by overturning public institutions in despite of it; 
84
not by infusing a new life, but destroying old organizations; and by reconstructing their social edifices
not in submission to the word of God, but the
theories of unbelieving men, and in contemptuous
disregard of those first and everlasting principles which
are necessary to preserve their freedom from licentiousness, their self-government from anarchy; or, to
prevent the necessary reaction of taller and more
oppressive despotisms, and the meeting, at length, of
the greatest liberty and the greatest barbarism, after
some possible modern fashion of elective tyranny, in
the greatest moral, social, and political degradation oT
the world, from which it could be restored only by
the Jiat of the Creator.
4. That, consequently, it is the duty of all virtuous
and patriotic men, and especially of ministers of the
Gospel, as professed guides and conservators of society, to beware of this specious and wide-spreading
sophistry, and jealous of the influence of its superficial, bustling, and intriguing propagators;   to inquire more carefully into its history as early introduced from pagan sources into the Christian schools,
its gradual, but inconstant development in Church
and State, in all periods, especially the present
boasted philosophical period of Christendom, and the
innumerable vanities and delusions to which it has
given rise; -to criticize, by a Divine standard, the
chimerical expectations it has awakened, both in 
85
Church and State, of a perfected state of humanity
by new organizations of society, upon its own professedly liberal ideas, while the influence of vital
Christianity is continually diminishing; the faith of
the primitive churches, and the puritan doctrines of
the reformation are more extensively dishonored; a
state of general social disintegration, confusion, and
strife, is becoming more extensive and alarming; the
materials for a perfect commonwealth are rapidly
diminishing; a more individualized selfishness, and
unscrupulous overreaching are well-nigh universal; a
gloomy uncertainty reigns, scarcely relieved by the
professions of new cliques and combinations that
steam up from the decaying rubbish of the old; the
best servants of Church and State are retiring  to
secret places, while noisy partisans, and insane agitators disgrace the posts which they had adorned; and
"Men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which  are coming  on the
earth," because of the evidently increasing incapacity
of society in general for self-government, or for appreciating and enjoying the blood-bought blessings of
civil and religious liberty.  And this obligation has
peculiar force upon ministers of the Gosper, lest
they be borne, more extensively and irrecoverably,
upon the popular current of secularity, selfishness,
and unbelief, and seduced to a more general adoption
of merely human, political, rhetorical, philosophical,
8 
86
fantastic, and, ultimately, formal and superstitious
methods of performing their Divine mission, to the
grief of all truly Christian men, the contempt of
judicious and patriotic citizens, and the curse of
Almighty God.
These corollaries, and many others which  could
not be drawn out, or even suggested, within the
limits proper to this letter, follow, by logical necessity, from the premises and reasonings to which
Presbyter here calls the attention of his brethren;
and they cannot be controverted if those premises
and reasonings are sustained.   Yet they are not
merely inferential, but admit of independent support,
and have a reflex action to confirm the principles
from which they naturally result. For they fall in
with the fundamental idea of natural and revealed
religion, as the supreme and authoritative arbiter and
judge of affairs, in opposition to the conceits, notions,
and opinions of men; with the natural laws of mind,
and of language and interpretation, by which we
ascertain the meaning of the Divine records; as of all
other compositions; with the phenomena of physical
nature which are open to the common observation of
men; with the analogies of history and experience,
our only safe lights next to the holy Scriptures; with
the theology of the Bible, as it stands in the letter
of the inspired volume, and is drawn out in the
formulas and standards of the church, in its best 
87
periods; with the first principles of ethics as contained in the decalogue, and Christ's new commandment; and with the existing manifestations of the
Divine Providence throughout the world.
It is this comprehensive bearing of the question of
slavery, that gives it so much greater consequence
than is apt to be imagined by those whose instincts
and impulses are permitted to govern their decisions.
Every thing in the government of God is related to
every other thing, and stands in its proper adjustment to all the parts of the general system. The
shock that we communicate at a single point, vibrates
through the universe. Its effect is traceable, for the
present, by reason of our imperfect faculties, but a
little way. But we hear from it again; and, perhaps,
then, by the ruin which it causes at another extremity, or a disturbance at the centre. If God has
judged slavery important in his scheme of providence,
there is no principle of morals, no doctrine of religion,
no interest of the State, no condition of the Church,
present or prospective, that would not suffer, not
from the correction of its abuses, but from its abolition, while the reasons of it continue. It could not
cease before its natural period, without a derangement whose course and consequences could be calculated only by omniscience.   It might  hasten  a
general catastrophe of the nations. It might produce a wreck of all things. Our fond imaginations 
88
and foolish hopes could not prevent or limit the
destruction, and our subsequent regrets would be
unavailing.  If slavery be accounted wrong, yet this
thought of its vast relations should sober us in discussion, and moderate our measures. If it present an
open question, it should the more restrain us. If it
be right, language could not describe the folly of its
intemperate adversaries, the madness of its rash assailants. Let destruction come, if it must, on either
side, whether for maintaining or subverting it, against
the will of God, yet the heart of Christian men
should be moved only to defer it, to shorten the days
of vengeance, and to weep over the desolation.
Revolution may come, with its accumulated horrors
of civil and servile war. It is likely to come, as
things are tending. Fanaticism, as usual, may stir
up a fury which will defy control. Whether such
a remedy for abuses of government is right, it would
exceed the design of these pages to discuss. The
distinctions above taken between the Church and
State would, however, suggest a method of discussion
that might afford no little aid to a serious inquirer.
But, whatever should be judged, on the ground
of natural religion, it is evident that Christianity
and its ministers are precluded from all such expedients for the social regeneration of mankind, and,
specifically, from making slavery an occasion for the
use of them. Paul, and all the Apostles have settled 
89
that question for the church, under its supernatural
dispensation of the Gospel, whatever may be true, or
whatever necessary for the world still regulated only
by natural religion, and having not citizenship in a
more spiritual kingdom. The State, in distinction
from the ecelesia, is and must be political, and human
policy, without the Divine life of Christ, is and must
be utilitarian and expedient; for the stream of social
life can rise no higher than its fountain in the human
soul. But Christians, and Christian ministers are
supposed to be of another mould; and this it is of
great consequence to observe, while, through the
influence of a spurious philosophy, a mighty process
of secularization is now going on, which is likely to
bring the church and the world down to the same
low level of merely human conceits, and humnan
passions; and while human happiness, and not God's
righteousness, is likely to be made the great end of
life.  A  true Christianity is not so.  God's righteousiess is its foundation, and its top-stone; and though
Paul himself, or an angel from heaven, should preach
otherwise, they would be accursed. Christianity is,
without doubt, the greatest of all builders, and has
the most glorious of all cities. Yet it builds not
with crude materials of earth; but with jaspers, and
sapphires, and all manner of precious stones. It is
the greatest of destroyers; but only by reaction,
when it meets the greatest of all resistance,  and
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society strikes "against its wall of adamant, and is
driven back." Christianity condescends to nothing
but a Divine activity. It affects no secular policy, or
fashion, or influence, or preeminence.  It is not designed to thunder in the Capitol, to tower above the
State, or figure in its ranks, or control by force whom
it cannot assimilate by virtue. It revolves round its
own centre, and flies not off in eccentric paths, to
increase the perturbations and irregularities of the
general system. Christianity cannot be identified
with the State, nor can the two reciprocate and
interchange offices without mutual decrepitude, and
premature  dissolution.    When  that union,  as in
apostate periods, and, as now, remarkably, takes
place, the Scripture calls the unnatural product "a
beast," and "a bottomless pit" is opened to receive
it,-the same which is yawning  to engulph the
corrupt Church and State dynasties of the old
world, and which it is the probation of this country
to avoid; -which  may  God  grant.   Christianity
cannot lay its head in Delilah's lap without being
shorn of-its strength, and losing its eyes, and grinding in the prison, to be dragged out for the mere
sport of the uncircumcised. Its hair, meanwhile,
might grow for another desperate struggle; but
it could never resume its dignity, or recover its
prerogatives. It might be powerful to bring down
some temple of the idolaters, but to be itself buried 
91
in its ruins. Samson died still a Hebrew, and a
strong man; and he died in faith: but, nevertheless, he died like a fool. He should not have died
at all. He should not have lost his hair.
Political agitations and revolutions are not for
the church of God. Cl1rist so taught us, by the
most significant illustration, when he set it up, by his
Spirit and his apostles, on the day of Pentecost, and
then indicated the relations of Christianity to the
social state. He had gathered, in the central city
of the world, representatives from all its countries:Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans,
Cappadocians, Pontians, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Lybians, Cyreneans, Romans, Jews,
Proselytes, Cretes, Arabians. Peter taught them,the same whom Christ had cured of his political
rashness by that sharp rebuke -" Put up thy sword
into thy sheath: they that take the sword shall
perish by the sword."  Three thousand were  converted; and they returned to their respective countries, bound by no secret oaths, whispering no party
shibboleths, and projecting no illuminated theories to
reconstruct society upon a better model, but diffusing through it, everywhere, a better spirit. They
went forth not to revolutionize, but to convert; not
to burn the old habitations, bad though they were,
and turn out the dwellers, promiscuously, into the
pitiless storm, but to make them more tolerable, and 
92
even gladsome, by the presence of the loving Christ.
Those good men did what they could: and, for three
centuries, the church, till a political philosophy corrupted it, constituted, under the persecuting protection of a heathen government, what Paul calls the
"let," the hindrance  to the introduction of "The
man of sin"- The Church and State power - "That
wicked " - which has been more injurious than
Pagan Rome; for Gregory is worse than Cesar. But
even him, and all that is called Antichrist, Christ will
himself " consume by the breath of his mouth, and
destroy by the brightness of his coming."   That
work of judgment is his, and not for his disciples
by ignorant conspiracies, social agitations, and headlong overturnings before the time.   "Vengeance  is
mine: I will repay, saith the Lord." It is not theirs
to be citizen Christians, but Christian citizens; not
to affect a kingdom on which Christianity shall stand,
and be supported, but a kingdom that shall stand on
Christianity. Our glorious corner-stone is not laid in
London, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, Washington,
but Zion. On that the church shall rest; while, to
the dynasties of earth, if they accept it not, it will be
'a stumbling-stone,. and a rock of offence.' They
shall fall on it, and be broken;  or'it will fall on
them, and grind them to powder.'
From the issues above presented, many will be
likely to have their attention diverted, and others 
93
will be more confused, by suggestions like the following: -"that slavery in the abstract, is nothing: "
"that our concern is not with the principle of slavery,
but with slavery as it is: "-" that slavery, if carried
on as Presbyter would have it, is no slavery at aH l: ""that an infused Christianity would destroy it, and
that Christ intended it should so come to its end."
To all these Presbyter replies; - that it is a strange
turn which is now taken by those lively and philosophic persons who have, for so many years, busied
themselves and the public with the abstractions of
liberty, equality, fraternity, the rights of man, a
Divine consciousness, a higher law, an inner light;
and have opposed these abstractions to the principle
and the system of slavery; who have kept the nation
astir with the ceaseless din of their controversy, and
almost armed one half of it against the other -  that
it is a strange turn for them now to forswear abstractions and princples, and to plant themselves on things as
they are; - it is strange that they should meekly affect
to be no longer philosophers, but plain, practical men,
their imaginations no longer fired with speculative
ideas, but their hearts overflowing with humane affections; bound to no ethical, political, or reformatory
theories, but simply intent on doing good; renouncing all fiction and romance, all sentiment and
passion, all vaporing and declamation -  the natural
fruit of a stimulated  and ambitious fancy —and 
94
minded only to destroy slavery by the infusion of a
Christian spirit: - that, however, it is eminently
gratifying to see them, at length, so far recovered to
a normal state of mind, and making such gentle
acknowledgmnents and professions:-  that to bring
them to these more reasonable and Christian views,
has been the leading object of Presbyter in both his
letters: - that, if their present suggestions be not
mere logical artifice and evasion, but a matter of
sincere conviction, and if they will hold to them,
consistently, in practice, then all dangerous agitation
will be at an end, speculative discussion will cease
from the pulpit, and the religious press, clerical
haranguing from the platform, political action from
the church, and partisan warfare from society in
general.   These and such like vanities will be succeeded by offices of Christian charity; a new type of
philanthropy, and more consistent with godliness, will
be revealed; the public mind will be prepared for
more healthy discussion, and generous activity;  a
saving change will come over the body politic;
slavery, as it is, will be succeeded by slavery, as it
oughl to be, through the inworking of a Christian
spirit; and for such an annihilation of it all good
Christians and honest patriots will unite in a general
jubilee; for the millennium, in that respect, will
have come.
Such a change in our philosophers would be the 
95
more auspicious, because it would promise the only
possible deliverance of the country from an approaching catastrophe. The war of abstractions has brought
the nation almost to its crisis.  The  principle of
liberty and equality has been arrayed against slavery,
till our social edifice is shaken to its foundations; and
ruin must ensue if the strife be carried on. For the
principles involved are vital and essential. They are
not sectional, political, prudential, financial, but ethical
and theological. They pertain to the centre; and a
strife at the great heart would, at length, draw in all
the subordinate forces of society; and dissolution
would be inevitable.
If, then, our fanciful philosophers are ready to
hold abstractions as nothing, and to treat them
accordingly, giving up all controversy in regard to
princip)les, and attentive only to facts; that is - the
way and manner in which slavery is carried on,-and
to Christian methods of meliorating, improving, and
thereby destroying it, with reference to the setting
up of a perfect Christian state, -our country, without
doubt, will soon become a spectacle to the world.
There is, it is true, a sense in which slavery as it is;
that is - apart from its principle, - is an abslraction,
as a predicate taken from its subject is an abstractionz,
or as clothes are the abstract of a man; and, in that
respect, it might be imagined that difficulties and
disputes would  occasionally  arise.   But  such  an 
96
abstraction, not being merely notional and speculative, like liberty, equality, and fraternity, but a thing
to be looked upon and handled, could be more easily
disposed of, or shaped to existing exigencies, or be
made conformable to better acknowledged standards,
than elementary ideas, or mere fictions of the brain.
It would not be so likely to intoxicate the imagination, or inflame the passions, or be made subservient
to political views. Princples, whether right or wrong,
are immutable. But fashions change; and nothing
is more susceptible of the influence than clothes.
The nation could not well be distracted on that
account; for new fashions would set in before the
parties could gird themselves for any deadly strife
about the old; or the disputants might be diverted
into a more friendly qilarrel concerning their respective habiliments of war, and the fume would pass off
in a campaign of tailoring diplomacy. Or, the offending party would see the advantage of making clothes
after an improved pattern, and the aggrieved would
have their complacency restored by the new costume.
Even the old clothes would not be thought so offensive in the abstract, as they were in the concrete. The
abuses of slavery would not make so great a figure,
apart from its principles; or, if they did, they would
be more willingly corrected. At the worst, a war of
fashions is never prolonged or deadly. A better
temper would grow, imperceptibly, on both sides. 
97
They would come together, and their combined
wisdom would find means of correcting unnecessary
irregularities, or of repairing their injurious effects.
Our philosophers in particular, then confining themselves to the thing as it is, and to the greater improvements that tottld be, would naturally lose their zeal
in respect to matters beyond their sphere of observation and jurisdiction, belonging appropriately to
their neighbors, and would busy themselves more with
their own affairs. Their heated imagination being
brought down to its natural proportion to their more
sober faculties, all their powers would thenceforth be
harmonized, and, in the state of healthful activity
which would ensue, they would presently forget their
ugly dreams, and make a better reckoning of realities. Three or four millions of slaves would not seem
of so much greater consequence to the world than
twenty millions of freemen; yet, being held in value
in proportion to their quantity of being, or of merit,
and consequently acted upon for the sake of bettering their condition, they would immediately feel the
enlivening influence of such a revived Christian and
patriotic spirit. The generous excitement would
reach their lowliest cabins. It would increase their
courage, constancy, and fidelity. It would strengthen
their humane affections, alleviate their burdens, purify
their pleasures, inspire their worship, awaken holier
aspirations after an improved social state, and thus
9 
98
produce the only efecttial, and the only possible preparation for it. If our philosophers are sincere, and
will be consistent, the nation will be saved.
Are they sincere?  Will they be consistent?  Will
they abjure their abstractions and conceits, their
speculations and theories, their personal invectives
and partisan finesse, their fiery rhetoric and revolutionary agitation, and go out as missionaries preaching the Gospel to masters and slaves after the manner
of Christ and his Apostles, and with reference to the
same great ends? Will they substitute for their
alleged spiritual illuminations, their new and improved lights, the old-fashioned and substantial verities of natural  and revealed religion; and make
society better, not by assailing its old foundations,
but by infusing into all its disorganized departments,
the restoring and conserving principle of a heavenly
'life? Will they contribute to introduce that perfect
state -the  object of their fond  imaginings,- in
which  there  shall be  no  need  of  punishments,
restraints, and discipline,-not by theological rodomontade, ethical romancing, logical chicanery, literary artifice, political confusions, popular excitements,
social contentions, personal animosities, and the overturning of society in general, all in subserviency
to  their  Divine idea  of -  liberty, -but  by  the
Word and the Spirit of God? Will they subordinate hI.ma,ity to the Godhead, happiness to right 
99
eousness, rights to duties, imagination to judgment,
instinct to reason, and all the faculties to the holy
Scriptures?   Will they consent  that God  should
govern the world in his own way? Will they bear
witness in the earth for Him? - Great is the problem
of the future!
That problem, and all others whatsoever related to
it, or dependent upon it, must be solved mainly by
ministers of the Gospel. They are the constituted
leaders of society in morals and religion. If they
magnify their office, and teach not for doctrine the
commandments of men, they will be holden in the
Divine covenant, and conduct the host into the
promised land. But, if, imprudently misled by a visionary philosophy, they make the Divine word subservient to speculative and romantic ideas, and the
achievement of a secular and political salvation,
they will find their graves, with the bewildered and
idolatrous people, on the hither side of Jordan, with
no prospect of a better resurrection. - May God
preserve them.- And let an unworthy Presbyter be
pardoned, if, in his honest  zeal to "vindicate  the
ways of God to man," he has exceeded the bounds of
a good discretion, or said aught to wound, unnecessarily, the feelings of his brethren. Fare ye well!
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