“------to fan him while he sleeps,
And tremble when he wakes.”

Indeed, they already threaten to separate from their Northern brethren, unless this right be conceded.  But have we not other and conclusive evidence, that primitive Christians were not slaveholders?  We will cite a few passages from the Bible to show, that it was not the will of the Apostles to have their disciples hold manual labor in disrepute, as it is held, in all slaveholding communities.  “Do your own business, and work with your own hands, as we commanded you.”  “For this we commanded you, that, if any would not work, neither should he eat.”  “Let him that stole, steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.”  In bringing the whole verse into this last quotation, I may have displeased you.  I am aware, that you slaveholders proudly and indignantly reject the applicableness to yourselves of the first phrase in this verse, and also of the maxim, that “the partaker of stolen goods is as bad as the thief.”  I am aware, that you insist, that the kidnapping of a man, or getting possession of him, after he has been kidnapped, is not to be compared, if indeed it can be properly called theft at all, with the crime of stealing a thing.  It occurs to me, that if a shrewd lawyer had you on trial for theft, he would say, that you were estopped from going into this distinction between a man and a thing, inasmuch as, by your own laws, the slave is expressly declared to be a chattel—­is expressly elevated into a thing.  He would say, however competent it may be for others to justify themselves on the ground, that it was but a man, and not a thing, they had stolen; your own statutes, which, with magic celerity, convert stolen men into things, make such a plea, on your part, utterly inadmissible.  He would have you as fast, as though the stolen goods, in your hands, were a bushel of wheat, or some other important thing, instead of a mere man.

But, if you are not yet convinced that primitive Christians were not slaveholders, let me cite another passage to show you, how very improbable it is, that they stood in this capacity:—­“all, that believed, had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”  Now I do not say, that all the primitive believers did so.  But if a portion of them did, and met with the Apostles’ approbation in it, is it at all probable, that a course, so diverse from it, as that of slaveholding in the Church, met likewise with their approbation?

2d.  I go on to account for the Apostles’ omission to specify slavery.