Abolitionists may affect as much sanctity and philanthropy, as they
please, and pile their maledictions and execrations on the heads of
slave holders mountain high! They can call them murderers, thieves and
robbers to their hearts content! They can anathematize better men than
themselves; and denounce slavery as a curse, an evil, a hardship! They
can call slavery by what name they choose! For it matters but little
what they call it; nor what it really is; nor in what it originated;
nor yet, what perpetuates it; nor what our feelings and views may be;
for slavery exists in our midst; and has existed in our world as a
civil institution, for more than three thousand years: and when God in
his amazing condescension, unbounded benevolence, and infinite mercy
vouchsafed to us a revelation of his will; he informed us in language
clear and explicit, how we should treat it. The duties and obligations
of ministers, and churches--of masters and servants, are unfolded and
enforced in the Sacred Record; and he that errs, is without excuse.
"But men have become wise above what is written." God, alone, was
competent to decide what was best for masters and servants,
individuals, and nations. We are all the work of his hands, and it is
his prerogative to dictate to us laws for the guidance and regulation
of our conduct. Those, then, who receive the Bible as a revelation of
the will of God, and take it as their guide and counsellor; cannot
consistently do otherwise, than to treat slavery and slaveholders in
accordance with its clear and unmistakable injunctions, warnings and
admonitions, a precept or practice from the Sacred Oracles, is
practical infidelity; and I here, openly and boldly assert, that no
intelligent man, who reads and believes the Bible to be the word of
God, ever did, or ever will embrace the extreme views of the abolition
party in the United States. No! It is impossible: for they are in
direct opposition to the plainest declarations of the inspired
writers--to the whole spirit and tenor of the Sacred Volume. I care