INQUIRY INTO SCRIPTURAL AND ANCIENT SERVITUDE, IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT NEITHER WAS CHATTEL SLAVERY; WITH THE REMEDY FOR AMERICAN SLAVERY. BY E. SMITH, MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL. MANSFIELD, OHIO: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR AT THE WESTERN BRANCH BOOK CON. 1852. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 363958A ASTOR, LENOX AND ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two, by E. SMITH, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the District of Ohio. WILLIAM H. SHAIN, HUDSON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. PREFACE. THE following pages contain the result of the author's investigations of what the Holy Scriptures teach on the subject of Chattel Slavery, for the last twelve years, as concisely stated as possible. He has read much in defense of the Holy Scriptures against the charge of supporting slavery, but nothing that has, in his judgment, set their teachings in the true light. He is well aware that he has taken much higher ground than has been taken by anti-slavery men, and asks a candid examination of the proof brought to sustain it, and the reasonings on that proof. He has been convinced for several years, that there never was a slaveholder in the church of God, either under the patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian dispensations, until after the days of the Apostles; and that the Great Head of the same never allowed one to be in it. The following pages exhibit the proof on which that faith rests. Slavery was prohibited by positive law in all nations, from the time of Noah until after the days of Moses, and had not found its way into Asia Minor at the time christian churches were planted there, and the epistles were written to those churches. Satisfactory proof of all this will be found in the following pages. This is all new ground-outside of all that has been attempted on this subject, and if fully established, forever settles the question against the slaveholder's right to membership in the church of the living God. |