RELIGIOUS TESTIMONIES.
Archbishop Potter.Some of our wise ones will have it thatdoulosmeans slave. Archbishop Potter, than whom no man was more learned in Grecian antiquities, in his work on them, published years ago, says, chap. 10, “Slaves, as long as they were under the government of a master, were calledoiketdi; butafter their freedomwas granted them, they weredouloi, not being like the former, a part of their master’s estate, but only obliged to some grateful acknowledgments and small services, such as were required of theMetoikoi, to whom they were in some few things inferior.”
The Younger Edwards, (Pastor of a church in New Haven, and afterwards President of Union College)—“Every man who cannot show, that his negro hath by his voluntary conduct, forfeited his liberty, is obligatedimmediately to manumit him. And to hold [such an one] in a state of slavery, is to be every day guilty of robbing him of his liberty, or ofman-stealing—and fifty years from this time (1791) it will be asshameful for a man to hold a negro slave, as to be guilty of common robbery or theft.”
Dr. Adam Clarke.“Among Christians slavery is anenormity, and acrimefor whichperditionhas scarcely an adequate state of punishment.”
Rev. Albert Barnes.“From the whole train of reasoning which I have pursued, I trust it will not be considered as improper to regard it as a position clearly demonstrated, that the fair influence of the Christian religion would everywhere abolish slavery. Let its principles be acted out; let its maxims prevail and rule in the hearts of all men, and the system, in the language of the Princeton Repertory, 'wouldSPEEDILYcome to an end.’ In what way this is to be brought about, and in what manner the influence of the church may be made to bear upon it, are points on which there may be differences of opinion. But there is one method which is obvious, and which, if everywhere practised, would certainly lead to this result. It is,for the Christian church to cease all connection with slavery.”
Rev. S. H. Cox, D. D.“The cause of human rights is only the converse of the cause of human duties; and how pious, or how orthodox, or how heroic, I should like to know, is he, for whose higher evangelical refinement of sensibility, this subject of righteousness is too 'delicate’ to be theologized into our ethics, our creed, or our prayers? Away with such nauseating and hypocritical affectation, in high places, and low ones, too.”—Letter to S. J. May, Auburn, May 5, 1835.