I believe also that he is perfectly disinterested, and of undoubted Christian benevolence. The objection has therefore acquired an accumulated weight from the authority and worth of the person who made it; and consequently, it demanded more circumspection and reading, to answer it in any reasonable time, than my short broken intervals of leisure (the only time that I was then master of) would permit me to bestow upon it; and as so much time has already elapsed, the answer which I originally intended for my friend's private perusal, shall now be adressed to all well meaning persons in general, who may have had the same motives for admitting in any degree the legality of slavery; and that there are many such (even among those that are concerned in the practice of slaveholding) the example of my disinterested friend's opinion, and common charity, oblige me to suppose. I shall therefore consider my friend's opinion as the common excuse of our American and West Indian brethren for tolerating slavery among them.
"I do not think (says he) that Christianity released slaves from the obligation they were under according to the custom and law of the countries, where it was propagated."
This objection to my general doctrine is expressed in the most guarded terms;—so guarded, that it obliges me to acknowledge, that the observation is, in some respects, strictly true. My present attempt is not to confute, but rather to demonstrate wherein this truth consists, which will afterwards enable me to point out such a due limitation of the doctrine, as will render it entirely inconsistent with the hypothesis, which I have so long laboured to maintain, viz: the absolute illegality of slavery among Christians.
In conformity to my worthy friend's declaration I must first observe, that the disciples of Christ (whose kingdom he himself declared—"is not of this world." John xviii. 36,) had no express commission to alter the temporal condition of men, but only to prepare them for a better world by the general doctrine of faith, hope, charity, peace and
