Bible View of Slavery

18 threw the whole system of slavery, the way for which had 'been prepared by the Jewish economy, with its protection to fugitive slaves, ordained by God himself, and its denunciations against man-stealing. Christian Europe became free—the curse upon Canaan had been expiated—the Jews, as a nation, had ceased to hold slaves—Christian nations had ceased to hold slaves. Now, let the justifier of negro slavery point to the revelation of God’s will which directed the re-establishment of slavery. No, God did not authorize it. History can here point to the source and the cause- Whence, then, came slavery again into Christian society ? It arose, as St. Chrysostom says of the first rise of slavery, from avarice and inordinate cupidity. When thousands of adventurers, on the discovery of this new world, in their eager pursuit of wealth, tore away by violence and robbery the unfortunate sons of Africa, to toil for them in the mines and on the plantations of the West Indies and Central America, then was established that horrible iniquity, the African slave trade, and that barter in human flesh which Christianity had entirely removed. The learned Dominican Soto (1542), confessor to Charles V., in opposing this inhuman traffic soon after its establishment, says : Cl It is affirmed that the unhappy Ethiopians are, by fraud or force, carried away and sold as slaves. If this is true, neither those who have taken them, nor those who purchased them, nor those who hold them in bondage, can ever have a quiet conscience till they emancipate them, even if no compensation should be obtained.”—[Mackintosh’s Ethic. Phil., p. 79.)' The justification of negro slavery at the South justifies the slave trade ; nay, the advocates of the doctrine of this pamphlet are bound to sustain and defend the slave trade. The author tells us : “I believe that the number of negroes Christianized and civilized at the South, through the system of slavery, exceeds the product of (English and American) missionary labors in a proportion of thousands to one.” Let us place in contrast with this system, that which was sanctioned by the “precepts and example of the apostles.” St. Luke, in. the Acts (viii. 26), relates how St. Philip received a special commission to go towards the South to meet an Ethiopian, and

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