Such also is the effect, which the subsequent slavery in the colonies must produce. For by your inhuman treatment of the unfortunate _Africans_ there, you create the same insuperable impediments to a conversion. For how must they detest the very name of _Christians_, when you _Christians_ are deformed by so many and dreadful vices? How must they detest that system of religion, which appears to resist the natural rights of men, and to give a sanction to brutality and murder?
But, as we are now mentioning Christianity, we must pause for a little time, to make a few remarks on the arguments which are usually deduced from thence by the _receivers_, in defence of their system of oppression. For the reader may readily suppose, that, if they did not hesitate to bring the _Old_ Testament in support of their barbarities, they would hardly let the _New_ escape them.
_St. Paul_, having converted _Onesimus_ to the Christian faith, who was a fugitive slave of _Philemon_, sent him back to his master. This circumstance has furnished the _receivers_ with a plea, that Christianity encourages slavery. But they have not only strained the passages which they produce in support of their assertions, but are ignorant of historical facts. The benevolent apostle, in the letter which he wrote to _Philemon_, the master of _Onesimus_, addresses him to the following effect: "I send him back to you, but not in his former capacity[111], _not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved_. In this manner I beseech you to receive him, for though I could _enjoin_ you to do it, yet I had rather it should be a matter of your _own will_, than of _necessity_."
It appears that the same _Onesimus_, when he was sent back, was no longer _a slave_, that he was a minister of the gospel, that he was joined with _Tychicus_ in an ecclesiastical commission to the church of the _Colossians_, and was afterwards bishop of _Ephesus_. If language therefore has any meaning, and if history has recorded a fact which may be believed, there is no case more opposite to the doctrine of the _receivers_, than this which they produce in its support.
It is said again, that Christianity, among the many important precepts which it contains, does not furnish us with one for the abolition of slavery. But the reason is obvious. Slavery at the time of the introduction of the gospel was universally prevalent, and if Christianity had abruptly declared, that the millions of slaves should have been made free, who were then in the world, it would have been universally rejected, as containing doctrines that were dangerous, if not destructive, to society. In order therefore that it might be universally received, it never meddled, by any positive precept, with the civil institutions of the times; but though it does not expressly say, that "you shall neither buy, nor sell, nor possess a slave," it is evident that, in its general tenour, it sufficiently militates against the custom.