4th.  Another reason for believing, that the Apostles intended no such limitation as that which you impose upon their words, is, that their injunctions are as applicable to the other classes of persons occupying these relations, as they are to the particular class to which you confine them.  The hired servant, as well as the slave, needs to be admonished of the sins of “eye service” and “purloining;” and the master of voluntary, as well as involuntary servants, needs to be admonished to “give that which is just and equal.”  The ruler in a republic, or, in a limited monarchy, as well as the despot, requires to be reminded, that he is to be “a minister of God for good.”  So the subject of one kind of civil government, as well as that of another, needs to be told to be “subject unto the higher powers.”

I need not extend my remarks to prove, that despotes and doulos are, in the case before us, to be taken in their comprehensive sense of master and servant:  and, clearly, therefore, the abolitionist is not guilty of violating your rule, “not to interfere with a civil relation (in another place, you say, ‘any of the existing relations of life’) for which, and to regulate which, either Christ or his Apostles have prescribed regulations.”  He believes, as fully as yourself, that the relation of master and servant is approved of God.  It is the slavery modification of it—­the slaveholder’s abuse and perversion of the relation, in reducing the servant to a chattel—­which, he believes, is not approved of God.

For the sake of the argument, I will admit, that the slave alone, of all classes of servants, was favored with specific instructions from the Apostles:  and then, how should we account for the selection?  In no other way, can I conceive, than, on the ground, that his lot is so peculiarly hard—­so much harder than that of persons under other forms of servitude—­that he needs, whilst they do not, Apostolic counsel and advice to keep him just, and patient, and submissive.  Let me be spared from the sin of reducing a brother man to such a lot.  Your doctrine, therefore, that the Apostles addressed slaves only, and not servants in general, would not, were its correctness admitted, lift you out of all the difficulties in your argument.

Again, does it necessarily follow from this admission, that the relation of slaveholder and slave is sinless?  Was the despotism of the Roman government sinless?  I do not ask whether the abuses of civil government, in that instance, were sinless.  But, I ask, was a government, despotic in its constitution, depriving all its subjects of political power, and extending absolute control over their property and persons—­was such a government, independently of the consideration of its abuses, (if indeed we may speak of the abuses of what is in itself an abuse,) sinless?  I am aware, that Prof.  Hodge says, that it was so:  and, when he classes despotism and slavery