Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the Church of England, who wrote and publiſhed in 1680 "The Negro's and Indian's Advocate, ſuing for their Admiſſion into the Church," etc., hardly intimates a doubt of the lawfulneſs of their ſlavery, while he pleads for their humanity and right to religion againſt a very general opinion of that day, which denied them both.
Dean Berkeley, in his famous ſermon before the Venerable Society in 1731, ſpeaks of "the irrational contempt of the Blacks, as Creatures of another Species, who had no right to be inſtructed or admitted to the Sacraments." Sermon, p. 19.
And George Keith (then Quaker), whose paper againſt the practice was ſaid to be given forth by the appointment of the meeting held by him in the city of Philadelphia, about the year 1693, gave a ſtrict charge to Friends "that they ſhould ſet their negroes at liberty, after ſome reaſonable time of ſervice." Gabriel Thomas's Hiſtory of Pennſylvania, etc., 1698, pp. 53, 54. This was probably the pamphlet quoted by Dr. Franklin in his letter to John Wright, 4th November, 1789. Works, x., 403.
Keith appears ſimply to have repeated the words of George Fox in Barbadoes in 1671, when he urged the religious training of the negroes, as well as kind treatment, in place of "cruelty towards them, as the manner of ſome hath been and is; and that after certain years of ſervitude they ſhould make them free." Journal, ii., 140. For a more particular account of this teſtimony of Fox, see The Friend, Vol. xvii. pp. 28, 29. 4to. Phil. 1843. The explicit
