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Show 180 LIBERTY AND SJ~AVERY. done it, be would have achieved far more for the cause of abolitionism than has been effected by all the splendors of his showy rhetoric. He has indeed as we shall presently see, made so~c attem~t to show that the Epistle to Philemon is a.n emancipation docu1ncnt! When we come to examine this most e:>.."traordinary attempt, we shall perceive that Mr. Sumner's power" to pervert tmds and to invent authority," has not been wholly held in reserve for what "might be done." If his view of this portion of Scripture be not very profound, it certainly makes up in originality what it lacks in depth. If it should fail to instruct, it will ttt least amuse the reader. It shall be noticed in due time. The next point that claims our attention is the intimation that St. Paul's "real judgment of slavery" may be inferred "from his condemnation, on another occasion, of' manstcalers,' or, according to the original tmd, slave-traders, in company with murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers." Were we disposed to enter into the exegesis of the passage thus referred to, we might easily show that Mr. Sumner is grossly at fault in his Greek. We might show that something far more enormous than even trading in slaves is aimed at by the condemna- ARGUMENT ~'ROM THE SCRIPTURES. 181 tion of the apostle. But we have not undertaken to defend "manstealcrs," nor "slave. traders," in any form or shape. lienee, we shall dismiss this point with the opinion of Macknight, who thinks the persons thus condemned in company with murderers of fathers and mothers, are "they who make war for the inhuman purpose of selling the vanquished as slaves, as is the practice of the Mricau princes." To take any free man, whether white or black, by force, and sell him into bondage, is manstealing. To make war for such a purpose, were, we admit, wholesale murder and manstealing combined. This view of the passage in question agrees with that of the great abolitionist, Mr. Barnes, who holds that "the essential idea of the term" in question, "is tl1at of converting a free man into a slave" .... the "changing of a freeman into a slave, especially by traffic, subjection, &c." Now, as we of the South, against whom Mr. Sumner is pleased to inveigh, propose to make no such changes of freemen into slaves, much less to wage war for any such purpose, we may dismiss his gross perversion of the text in question. lie may apply the condemnation of the apostle to us now, if it so please the benignity o1~ his Christian charity, |