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Show lGO LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. guided by his principles! Even the guilty Eli remonstrated with his sons. Yet if, instead of doing this, be had given them permission to practise the very sins they were bent upon, he might have been, for all that, as pure and faithful as tbe Father of mercies himself is represented to be in the writings of Dr. Wayland. Such arc the miserable straits, and such the impious sophisms, to which even divines arc reduced, when, on the supposition that slavery is a sin, they undertake to vindicate ot· defend the word which they themselves arc ordained to preach! Another reason, scarcely less remarkable than the one already noticed, is assigned for the omission of all precepts against slavery. "It was no part of the scheme of the gospel revelation," we are told by Dr. Wayland, (who quotes from Archbishop Whately,) "to lay down any thing approaching to a complete system of moral precepts-to enumerate every thing that is en;"oined or forbidden by our religion." If this method of teaching had been adopted, "the N~w Testament would," says Dt'. \Yayland, "have formed a libt·ary in itself, more voluminous than the laws of the realm of Gt·eat Britain." Now, all this is very tme; and hence ARGUMENT FROiU TirE SCRIPTURES. 161 the necessity of lcrtving many points of duty to the cnlighteacd conscience, and to the application of the more general precepts of the gospel. But how has it happened that slavery is passed over in silence? Because, we arc told, " every thing" could not be noticed. If, indeed, slavery be so great a sin, would it not have been easier for the divine teacher to say, Let it be abolished, than to lay down so many minute precepts for its regulation? \Vould this have tended to swell the gospel into a vast library, or to abridge its teachings? Surely, when Dr. Wayland sets up such a plea, he must have forgotten that the New Testament, though it cannot notice "every thing," contains a multitude of rules to regulate the conduct of the master and the slave. Otherwise he could scarcely have imagined that it was ft·om an aversion to minuteness, or from an impossibility to forbid every evil, that the sin of slavery is passed over in silence. lie must also have forgotten another thing. lie must have forgotten the colors in which he had painted the evils of slavery. If we may rely upon' these, then slavery is no trifling offence. It is, on the contrm·y, a stupendous sin, overspreading the earth, and crushing the L 14• |
