When it was resolved to adopt our present ecclesiastical organization, the Confession of Faith, Catechisms, and Book of Discipline were ordered to be published, that all persons might know the doctrines and forms of the church, in the most authentic manner. The question of slavery was discussed, and alas! against their consciences, the northern brethren entered into a compromise with the slaveholders, something like the federal compact, and agreed to tolerate the highest possible iniquity, rather than dissolve the Presbyterian confederacy. Yet, the understandings, sensibilities, and consciences of many revolted against that perfidious departure from godliness; and, to pacify the clamor of their minds against this abandonment of truth, they inserted the following illustration of slavery,—which the slaveholders permitted to stand in the book, being convinced that in practice, it would be only a dead letter. It is found in all the editions of "the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church," printed before the year 1818; and constitutes the note appended to the hundred and forty-second question of the larger Catechism;-"What are the sins forbidden in the eighth commandment?" The answer states, among other sins, man-stealing! And this is the account of that sin officially "ratified and adopted by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, held at Philadelphia, May the sixteenth, 1788, and continued, by adjournment, until the twenty-eighth of the same." Our General Assembly thus annotate. 1 Tim. i. 10. "The law is made for men-stealers. This crime, among the Jews, exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment; Exodus xxi. 16; he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death: and the apostle here classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he uses, in its original import comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or detaining them in it. Hominum fures, qui servos vel liberos abducunt, retinent, vendunt, vel emunt. STEALERS OF MEN ARE ALL THOSE WHO BRING OFF SLAVES OR FREEMEN, AND KEEP, SELL, OR BUY THEM. To steal a freeman, says Grotius, is the highest kind of theft. In other instances we only steal human property, but when we steal or retain men in slavery, we steal those, who, in common with ourselves, are constituted by the original grant, lords of the earth. Genesis i. 28. God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Vide Poli synopsin in loco." This was the authorized doctrine of the Presbyterian church, on the subject of slavery, from the meeting of the first General Assembly, in 1789, until the General Assembly of 1818, when that body determined that the note above quoted was no part of the belief and doctrine of the Presbyterian church. In reply to this fallacy, it must be observed, that every minister ordained prior to that meeting, solemnly declared his assent to the constitution of the church as it then existed, not as it was altered by that fearful body. The question is not so much, however, whether that doctrine be obligatory upon all Presbyterians, merely because it is found in the constitution of their church; but whether it is the decision of the oracles of God; and I maintain that it is infallibly correct. It has been often stated, and I know not how the heinous allegation can be disproved, that our church is mainly chargeable with the guilt of slavery in the United States. The proposition is thus declared. On the fourth of July, 1776, every person then in the United States, or who should afterwards be born in them, was pronounced free, from the very fact of his bearing the characters of man, and in the undisputed possession of certain inalienable rights. After a contest of seven years, the truth was recognized by all the European nations; and the country was entirely delivered from foreign control. Notwithstanding the national declaration, all the colored people were inhibited by force, from asserting or obtaining their "inalienable rights." During the revolutionary contest, most of the religious denominations had become so scattered and disorganized, that there was no union, and scarcely any intercourse among the members. The Presbyterians alone maintained, in some measure, their compactness of organization, and immediately after the peace, resumed their usual meetings, with an imposing influence. The question of slavery was early agitated; but "the fear of man, which bringeth a snare," swayed the Synod. All the southern states combined, at that period, probably did not contain one tenth part of the Presbyterian church. Nothing, therefore, could have been more easy, than to have fulfilled the claims of christian equity, and to have told the slaveholders-We cannot conscientiously, we dare not scripturally acknowledge you to be christians and Presbyterians. You must quit man-stealing, or we cannot hold gospel fellowship with you. Instead of this plain, honest dealing, the people of that day entered upon a course of expediency, prudence, and carnal policy. They first denied their own principles, by acknowledging that a person is not born free; and then, by holding out in practice the atrocious error, that a slaveholder is an acceptable follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, they opened the flood-gates of all possible iniquity: because this topic is decided, not by the standard of truth revealed in the scriptures, but according to the ever-shifting principles of "men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, who suppose that gain is godliness.' Will slaveholding professors of religion, and preachers, hear with any degree of patience and candor, a just application of the principles of natural justice and of the great law of love, to the crime of slaveholding? Like all other persevering sinners, they hate the light, neither come to the light, lest their deeds should be reproved. And can christian charity receive men who are thus persisting in the highest kind of theft, as true disciples of Jesus the Son of God? All persons acquainted with the southern states well know that slavery is there the grand source of infidelity; that slaveholding professors of religion are an insuperable stumbling-block to men of reflection and conscience, who are opposed to slavery; and that slavery constitutes an almost impassable barrier to the progress of the light and the truth as it is in Jesus. It is in vain any longer to palliate or conceal the enormity of this sin-a sin which renders callous the hearts of all who apologize for it, and sears as with a hot iron, the consciences of those who are guilty of this impious practice. From our Confession of Faith, we deduce these principles : 1. Slaveholding, under every possible modification, is man-stealing. 2. Man-stealing, as combining impiety in principle, falsehood in claim, injustice and cruelty without intermission and without end, is the most flagrant iniquity which a sinner can perpetrate. 3. All profession of religion, by a man who thus acts, is a gross deception. 4. The tolerance of such men as preachers and christian profesfessors, is a direct insult to Him who searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins of the children of men. 5. All the pleas of expediency which are offered for this perversion of God's truth are not less criminal than they are destructive. 6. Slavery in the United States can never be abolished as long as it is sanctioned and approved by the various denominations of christians. 7. Therefore it is the incumbent duty of every church to excommunicate, without delay, all those persons who will not cease to "steal, buy, sell, and enslave their fellow-citizens." We, as a body of people, stand convicted before the world of rank and constant hypocrisy. On several occasions, the questions connected with slavery have been introduced into the General Assembly; and uniformly the heart-rending subject has been evaded; or a cold, unmeaning, or Jesuistical minute has been recorded, instead of an efficient testimony and pungent resolution against sin. Conscientious men have asked for a fish, and the temporisers have given us a serpent -we have begged gospel bread, and they have given us the stone of mammon-we have solicited the egg of truth for our nourishment, and they have given us the slaveholder's scorpion to poison our morals and benumb our consciences. Forty-four years have passed away; men have pretended to lament the evil, to deplore the national guilt, to reprehend the inconsistency of professing gospel honesty, and constantly performing the villainy of kidnappers; and nevertheless, the crime increases, the hypocrisy extends, and the men-stealers augment in the most fearful manner. It is one of the remarkable characters of our age, that the principle of liberality extends itself to the greater obliquities, while it denounces the lesser sin. No design is formed to institute a comparison between the degrees of particular sins; but surely in ecclesiastical discipline, it is evidently unjust to permit the grosser offence to escape with impunity, or to be honored, while the inferior transgression receives the pouring out of the full vial of indignant censure. |