Page:The duties of masters and slaves respectively (1845).djvu/11

7 it is addressed to members of a Christian church at Colosse, and it addresses them as masters of slaves, and tells them their duties as masters. Here then we have, from the pen of an inspired Apostle, and written some years after the ascension of Christ, and after the day of Pentecost and the full establishment of the Gospel-church, an address directed to a church regularly organized under Apostolic authority; and the very terms in which this address, is couched show, that in that church, founded, governed, and instructed by Apostles themselves, were both masters and slaves. The relation is spoken of as existing, as well known and understood. Not one word of condemnation is here found, not a hint of its being wrong to be a master, or of its being an intolerable oppression to be a servant; but it is emphatically said, "Masters ought to treat their servants so and so." The inference is plain: slaveholding is not in itself sinful; since, if a master treat his slaves as herein required, he discharges his whole duty as a master; he may continue a master, continue to hold slaves so treated, and yet be a good man, and a worthy member of the church of Christ: which could not be, were slave-holding sinful in the sight of God.

Tell us not that the Apostles connived at slavery, because it was rooted in the usages of society and protected by law; because the community was not yet sufficiently enlightened to receive the whole truth on that subject, and because it would have perilled the very existence of the infant church to declare the real wickedness involved in slavery; and that, therefore, on the ground of expediency the Apostles wrote as they did, apparently sanctioning, what they really condemned! What! Are we to believe that the Apostles, the founders of the Christian church, the very men who counted not their lives dear "for the sake of truth and righteousness," suffered themselves to be deterred from a plain duty by fear of consequences? Are we to believe that they, who endured every hardship, braved every danger, and finally shed their blood to advance the cause of truth and goodness in the world, would, from dread of the consequences of denouncing it, tolerate in the infant churches they formed as models for the church in all ages, a sin so replete with evil, so enormous and so damning, as hot abolitionists now represent slaveholding to be? No man in his senses can believe this! The Apostles certainly addressed slaveholders in such terms as show that they regarded their position as masters, and their duty as Christians, as not at all inconsistent. If honest men, the Apostles would not thus directly sanction what they believed to be wrong. If, in writing their epistles to the churches, the Apostles were inspired of God, then it is plain, that not only did they honestly deem that the master of