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Show 16,1 LIBERTY AND SLAVER~ most remote application to such a subject. If any one wilt give our remarks ou this great "principle" a candid examination, we think he will admit that we have deceived ourselves on very plausible, if not on unanswerable, grounds. If slavery be a siu,-always and everywhere a monstrous iniquity,-then we should have been far more thoroughly enlightened with respect to its true nature, and found evasion far more difficult, if the New Testament had explicitly declared it to be such, and commanded all masters everywhere to emancipate their slaves. We could have driven a coach-and-four neither through, nor around, any such express prohibition. It is indeed only in consequence of the default, or omission, of such precept or command that the abolitionist appeals to what he calls ~he principles of the gospel. If he had only one such precept,-if he had only one such precise and pointed prohibition, he might then, and he would, most triumphantly defy evasion. He would say, There is the word; and none but the obstinate gainsayers, or unbelievers, would dare reply. But as it is, he is compelled to lose himself in vague generalities, and pretend to a certainty which nowhere exists, except in his own heated mind. This pre- ARGUMENT FROM TilE SCRIPTURES. 165 ten co, indeed, • that an express precept, prohibitory of slavery, is not the most dimct way to reveal its true natn rc, because a precept is so much more easily evaded than a principle, is merely one of the desperate expedients of a forlorn and hopeless canso. If the abolitionist would maintain that cause, or vindicate his principles, it will be found that he must retire, and hide himself from the light of revelation. 'L'hirdly, the above passage seems to p•·esent a very strange view of tho Divine proceedings. According to that view, it appears that the Almighty tried the method of teaching by precept in the Old Testament, and the experiment failed. For precepts may be so easily evaded, that every one in the Mosaic code was violated by the Pharisees. llence, the method of teaching by precept was h>id aside in the New Test.">ment, and the better method of teaching by principle was adopted. Such is the conclusion to which we must come, if we adopt the reasoning of Dr. Wayland. But we cannot adopt his reasoning; since we should then have to believe that the experiment made in the Old Testament proved a failure, and that its Divine Author, having grown wiser by experience, improved upon his former method. |