In the paragraph, which relates to the fourth and tenth commandments, there is another specimen of your loose reasoning.  You say, that the language, “In it (the Sabbath) thou shalt do no work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man servant, nor thy maid servant,” “recognises the authority of the master over the servant.”  I grant, that it does:  but does it at all show, that these servants were slaves?  Does it recognise any more authority than the master should exercise over his voluntary servants?  Should not the head of a family restrain all his servants, as well the voluntary as the involuntary, from unnecessary labor on the Sabbath?  You also say, that the tenth commandment “recognizes servants as the property of their masters.”  But how does it appear from the language of this commandment, that the man servant and maid servant are property any more than the wife is?  We will proceed, however, to the third section of your book.

Your acquaintance with history has enabled you to show some of the characteristics and fruits of Greek and Roman slavery.  You state the facts, that the subjects of this slavery were “absolutely the property of their masters”—­that they “were used like dogs”—­that “they were forbidden to learn any liberal art or perform any act worthy of their masters”—­that “once a day they received a certain number of stripes for fear they should forget they were slaves”—­that, at one time, “sixty thousand of them in Sicily and Italy were chained and confined to work in dungeons”—­that “in Rome there was a continual market for slaves,” and that “the slaves were commonly exposed for sale naked”—­that, when old, they were turned away,” and that too by a master, highly esteemed for his superior virtues, to starve to death”—­that they were thrown into ponds to be food for fish—­that they were in the city of Athens near twenty times as numerous as free persons—­that there were in the Roman Empire sixty millions of slaves to twenty millions of freemen mind that many of the Romans had five thousand, some ten thousand, and others twenty thousand.

And now, for what purpose is your recital of these facts?—­not, for its natural effect of awakening, in your readers, the utmost abhorrence of slavery:—­no—­but for the strange purpose (the more strange for being in the breast of a minister of the gospel) of showing your readers, that even Greek and Roman slavery was innocent, and agreeable to God’s will; and that, horrid as are the fruits you describe, the tree, which bore them, needed but to be dug about and pruned—­not to be cut down.  This slavery is innocent, you insist, because the New Testament does not show, that it was specifically condemned by the Apostles.  By the same logic, the races, the games, the dramatic entertainments, and the shows of gladiators, which abounded in Greece and Rome, were, likewise, innocent, because the New Testament does not show a specific condemnation of them by the apostles[A].  But,