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deprived of his natural rights, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest.

"From this view of the consequences resulting from the practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently fallen, of enslaving a portion of their brethren of mankind, it is manifestly the duty of all Christians, when the inconsistency of slavery with the dictates of humanity and religion has been demonstrated, and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors, as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout the world. We earnestly exhort them," the slaveholders, "to continue and to increase their exertions to effect a total abolition of slavery. We exhort them to suffer no greater delay to take place in this most interesting concern than a regard to the public welfare truly and indispensably demands.

"As our country has inflicted a most grievous injury on the unhappy Africans by bringing them into slavery, our country ought to be governed in this matter by no other consideration than an honest and impartial regard to the happiness of the injured party, uninfluenced by the expense or inconvenience which such a regard may involve. We, therefore, warn all who belong to our denomination of Christians, against unduly extending this plea of necessity; against making it a cover for the love and practice of slavery, or a pretence for not using efforts that are lawful and practicable to extinguish the evil.

"Having thus expressed our views of slavery, and of the duty indispensably incumbent on all Christians to labor for its complete extinction, we proceed to recommend, with all the earnestness and solemnity which this momentous subject demands, a particular attention to the following points.

"We recommend to all the members of our religious denomination, to facilitate and encourage the instruction of their slaves in the principles and duties of the Christian religion, by granting them liberty to attend on the preaching of the gospel; by favoring the instruction of them in Sabbath schools, and by giving them all other proper advantages for acquiring the knowledge of their duty both to God and man. It is incumbent on all Christians to communicate religious instruction to those who are under their authority, and the doing of this in the case before us, so far from operating, as some have apprehended that it might, as an excitement to insubordination and insurrection, would operate as the most powerful means for the prevention of those evils."

The Assembly here subjoin a note, which proves that the quietude of the island of Antigua, when the slaves of the neighboring West Indian islands had been in commotion, was owing to the religious instruction of the Moravian Missionaries. To which may since be added, the examples of Demarara and Jamaica. This document of the Assembly is thus closed: "We enjoin it on all Church Sessions and Presbyteries to discountenance, and as far as possible to prevent

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METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH-S. HOPKINS, D. D.

all cruelty, of whatever kind, in the treatment of slaves; especially the cruelty of separating husband and wife, parents and children; and that which consists in selling slaves to those who will either themselves deprive those unhappy people of the blessings of the gospel, or who will transport them to places where the gospel is not proclaimed, or where it is forbidden to slaves to attend upon its institutions. The manifest violation or disregard of this injunction, ought to be considered as just ground for the discipline and censures of the Church. And if it shall ever happen that a Christian professor in our communion shall sell a slave who is also in communion with our Church, contrary to his or her will and inclination, it ought immediately to claim the particular attention of the proper Church judicature; and unless there be such peculiar circumstances attending the case as can but seldom happen, it ought to be followed without delay, by a suspension of the offender from all the privileges of the Church, till he repent and make all the reparation in his power, to the injured party.” -Digest of the General Assembly page 341.

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

There is only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies, a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins. But wherever this is really fixed in the soul, it will be shown by its fruits. It is therefore expected of all who continue therein, that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation, by doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practised, such as-"the buying and selling of men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them."

OF SLAVERY,-Question.—What shall be done for the extirpation of the evil of slavery?

Answer 1.-We declare that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil of slavery; therefore, no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in our Church hereafter; where the laws of the state in which he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom.

Answer 2.-When any travelling preacher becomes an owner of a slave or slaves, by any means, he shall forfeit his ministerial character in our Church, unless he execute, if it be practicable, a legal emancipation of such slaves, comformably to the laws of the state in which he lived.-Doctrine and Discipline.

SAMUEL HOPKINS, D. D.

The master is not a proper judge in this case; you are not a proper judge of your treatment of your slaves; and though you may think you treat them very well, in some instances at least, if not in a constant

SAMUEL HOPKINS, D. D.

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way, they justly think themselves used very hardly, being really subjected to many hardships, which you would very sensibly feel and resent, if you were in their place; or should see one of your children a slave in Algiers, treated so by his master. There are but few masters of slaves, I believe, who do not use them in a hard, unreasonable manner, in some instances at least; and most do so in a constant way; so that an impartial, attentive bystander will be shocked with it, while the master is wholly insensible of any wrong. They who from us have visited the West Indies, have beheld how servants are used by their masters there, with a degree of horror, and pronounced them very unreasonable and barbarous; while the master, and perhaps his other domestics, have thought they were used well, being accustomed to such usage, and never once reflecting that these blacks were in any sense on a level with themselves, or that they have the least right to the treatment white people may reasonably expect of one another; and being habituated to view these slaves more beneath themselves, than the very beasts really are. And are we not, most of us, educated in these prejudices, and led to view the slaves among us in such a mean, despicable light, as not to be sensible of the abuses they suffer; when, if we or our children should receive such treatment from any of our fellow men, it would appear terrible in our sight? The Turks are by education and custom, taught to view the Christian slaves among them so much beneath themselves, and in such an odious light, that while they are treating our brethren and children, (we being judges) in the most unreasonable and cruel manner, they have not one thought that they injure them in the least degree.

Are you sure your slaves have a sufficiency of good food, in season; and that they never want for comfortable clothing and bedding? Do you take great care to deal as well by them in these things, as you would wish others would treat your own children, were they slaves in a strange land? If your servants complain, are you ready to attend to them? Or do you in such cases frown upon them, or do something worse, so as to discourage their ever applying to you, whatever they may suffer, having learned that this would only be making bad worse? Do you never fly into a passion, and deal with them in great anger, deciding matters respecting them, and threatening them, and giving sentence concerning them, from which they have no appeal, and perhaps proceed to correct them, when to a calm bystander you appear more fit to be confined in a bedlam, than to have the sovereign, uncontrollable dominion over your brethren, as the sole lawgiver, judge, and executioner? Do not even your children domineer over your slaves? Must they not often be at the beck of an ungoverned, peevish child in the family; and if they do not run at his or her call, and are not all submission and obedience, must they not expect the frowns of their masters, if not the whip?

If none of these things, my good sir, take place in your family, have we not reason to think you almost a singular instance? How common are things of this kind, or worse, taking place between mas

ters and their slaves? In how few instances, if in any, are slaves treated, as the masters would wish to have their own children treated, in like circumstances? How few are fit to be masters? To have the sovereign dominion over a number of their fellow men, being his property, and wholly at his disposal; who must abide his sentence and orders, however unreasonable, without any possibility of relief?

This leads me to observe, that our distresses are come upon us in such a way, and the occasion of the present war is such, as in the most clear and striking manner to point out the sin of holding our blacks in slavery, and admonish us to reform, and render us shockingly inconsistent with ourselves, and amazingly guilty if we refuse. God has raised up men to attempt to deprive us of liberty; and the evil we are threatened with is slavery.-This, with our vigorous attempts to avoid it, is the ground of all our distresses, and the general voice is, "We will die in the attempt, rather than submit to slavery." But are we at the same time making slaves of many thousands of our brethren, who have as good a right to liberty as ourselves, and to whom it is as sweet as it is to us, and the contrary as dreadful! Are we holding them in the most abject, miserable state of slavery, without the least compassionate feeling towards them or their posterity; utterly refusing to take off the oppressive galling yoke! Oh, the shocking, the intolerable inconsistency! And this gross, barefaced inconsistency is an open, practical condemnation of holding these our brethren in slavery; and in these circumstances the crime of persisting in it becomes unspeakably greater and more provoking in God's sight; so that all the former unrighteousness and cruelty exercised in this practice, is innocence, compared with the awful guilt that is now contracted. And in allusion to the words of our Saviour, it may with great truth and propriety be said, "If he had not thus come in his Providence, and spoken unto us, (comparatively speaking,) we had not had sin, in making-bond-slaves of our brethren; but now, we have no cloak for our sin."

And if we continue in this evil practice, and refuse to let the oppressed go free, under all this light and admonition, suited to convince and reform us; and while God is evidently correcting us for it, as well as for other sins, have we any reason to expect deliverance from the calamities we are under? May we not rather look for slavery and destruction, like that which came upon the obstinate, unreformed Jews? In this light, I think, it ought to be considered by us; and viewed thus, it affords a most forcible, formidable argument, not to put off liberating our slaves to a more convenient time; but to arise, all as one man, and do it with all our might, without delay, since delaying in this case is awfully dangerous, as well as unspeakably criminal.-Dialogue on African Slavery, 1776, republished 1785, by the N. Y. Manumission Society, whose president was John Jay.

JONATHAN EDWARDS.

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JONATHAN EDWARDS.

I propose to mention a few reasons against the right of the slavetrade-and then to consider the principal arguments which I have ever heard urged in favor of it. What will be said against the slavetrade will generally be equally applicable to slavery itself; and if conclusive against the former, will be equally conclusive against the latter.

As to the slave-trade, I conceive it to be unjust in itself, abominable on account of the cruel manner in which it is conducted, and totally wrong on account of the impolicy of it, or its destructive tendency to the moral and political interests of any country.

It is unjust in itself. It is unjust in the same sense and for the same reason as it is to steal, to rob, or to murder. It is a principle, the truth of which hath in this country been generally, if not universally acknowledged, ever since the commencement of the late war, that all men are born equally free. If this be true, the Africans are by nature equally entitled to freedom as we are; and therefore, we have no more right to enslave, or to afford aid to enslave them, than they have to do the same to us. They have the same right to their freedom, which they have to their property or to their lives. Therefore to enslave them, is as really, and in the same sense wrong, as to steal from them, to rob, or to murder them.

There are, indeed, cases in which men may justly be deprived of their liberty, and reduced to slavery; as there are cases in which they may be justly deprived of their lives. But they can justly be deprived of neither, unless they have, by their own voluntary conduct, forfeited it. Therefore, still, the right to liberty stands on the same basis with the right to life. And that the Africans have done something whereby they have forfeited their liberty, must appear, before we can justly deprive them of it; as it must appear that they have done something whereby they have forfeited their lives, before we may justly deprive them of these.

This trade, and this slavery, are utterly wrong on the ground of their impolicy. In a variety of respects they are exceedingly hurtful to the states which tolerate them.

They are hurtful, as they deprave the morals of the people. The incessant and inhuman cruelties practised in the trade and in the subsequent slavery, necessarily tend to harden the human heart against the tender feelings of humanity, in the masters of vessels, in the sailors, in the factors, in the proprietors of slaves, in their children, in the overseers, in the slaves themselves, and in all who habitually see those cruelties. Now the eradication, or even the diminution of compassion, tenderness, and humanity, is certainly a great depravity of heart, and must be followed with correspondent depravity of manners. And measures which lead to such depravity of heart and manners, cannot but be extremely hurtful to the state, and consequently are extremely impolitic.