reason, accounts for this.  But, these general truths and propositions are as comprehensive as the necessity of the case requires; and, carried out into all their suitable applications they leave no sin unforbidden.  Small as is the New Testament, it is as large as we need.  It instructs us in relation to all our duties.  It is as full on the subject of slavery, as is necessary; and, if we will but obey its directions, that bear on this subject, and “love one another,” and love our neighbors as ourselves, and, as we would that men should do to us, do “also to them likewise,” and “remember them, that are in bonds as bound with them,” and “give unto servants, that which is just and equal”—­not a vestige of this abomination will remain.

For the sake of the argument, I will admit, that the Apostles made no specific attack on slavery[A]; and that they left it to be reached and overthrown, provided it be sinful, by the general principles and instructions which they had inculcated.  But you will say, that it was their practice, in addition to inculcating such principles and instructions, to point out sins and reprove them:—­and you will ask, with great pertinence and force, why they did not also point out and reprove slavery, which, in the judgment of abolitionists, is to be classed with the most heinous sins.  I admit, that there is no question addressed to abolitionists, which, after the admission I have made for them, it is less easy to answer; and I admit further, that they are bound to answer it.  I will proceed to assign what to me appear to be some of the probable reasons, why the Apostles specified the sins of lying, covetousness, stealing, &c., and, agreeably to the admission, which lays me under great disadvantage, did not specify slavery.

[Footnote A:  This is no small admission in the face of the passage, in the first chapter of Timothy, which particularizes manstealing, as a violation of the law of God.  I believe all scholars will admit, that one of the crimes referred to by the Apostle, is kidnapping.  But is not kidnapping an integral and most vital part of the system of slavery?  And is not the slaveholder guilty of this crime?  Does he not, indeed, belong to a class of kidnappers stamped with peculiar meanness?  The pirate, on the coast of Africa, has to cope with the strength and adroitness of mature years.  To get his victim into his clutches is a deed of daring and of peril demanding no little praise, upon the principles of the world’s “code of honor.”  But the proud chivalry of the South is securely employed in kidnapping newborn infants.  The pirate, in the one case, soothes his conscience with the thought, that the bloody savages merit no better treatment, than they are receiving at his hands:—­but the pirate, in the other, can have no such plea—­for they, whom he kidnaps, are untainted with crime.

And what better does it make the case for you, if we adopt the translation of “men stealers?” Far better, you will say, for, on the authority of Othello himself,