[Footnote A:  Notes on Virginia]

“YE HAVE DESPISED THE POOR.”

It is no man of straw, with whom in making out such proof we are called to contend.  Would to God we had no other antagonist!  Would to God that our labor of love could be regarded as a work of supererogation!  But we may well be ashamed and grieved; to find it necessary to “stop the mouths” of grave and learned ecclesiastics, who from the heights of Zion have undertaken to defend the institution of slavery.  We speak not now of those, who amidst the monuments of oppression are engaged in the sacred vocation; who as ministers of the Gospel can “prophesy smooth things” to such as pollute the altar of Jehovah with human sacrifices; nay, who themselves bind the victim and kindle the sacrifice.  That they should put their Savior to the torture, to wring from his lips something in favor of slavery, is not to be wondered at.  They consent to the murder of the children; can they respect the rights of the Father?  But what shall we say of theological professors at the North—­professors of sacred literature at our oldest divinity schools—­who stand up to defend, both by argument and authority, southern slavery!  And from the Bible!  Who, Balaam-like, try a thousand expedients to force from the mouth of Jehovah a sentence which they know the heart of Jehovah abhors!  Surely we have here something more mischievous and formidable than a man of straw.  More than two years ago, and just before the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, appeared an article in the Biblical Repertory,[A] understood to be from the pen of the Professor of Sacred Literature at Princeton, in which an effort is made to show, that slavery, whatever may be said of any abuses of it, is not a violation of the precepts of the Gospel.  This article, we are informed, was industriously and extensively distributed among the members of the General Assembly—­a body of men, who by a frightful majority seemed already too much disposed to wink at the horrors of slavery.  The effect of the Princeton Apology on the southern mind, we have high authority for saying, has been most decisive and injurious.  It has contributed greatly to turn the public eye off from the sin—­from the inherent and necessary evils of slavery to incidental evils, which the abuse of it might be expected to occasion.  And how few can be brought to admit, that whatever abuses may prevail nobody knows where or how, any such thing is chargeable upon them!  Thus our Princeton prophet has done what he could to lay the southern conscience asleep upon ingenious perversions of the sacred volume!

[Footnote A:  For April, 1836.  The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met in the following May, at Pittsburgh, where, in pamphlet form, this article was distributed.  The following appeared upon the title page: 

PITTSBURGH: 
1836.
For gratuitous distribution.
]