The ancient Jewish Doctors agree in the testimony, that the servant from the strangers who at the close of his probationary year still refused to adopt the religion of the Mosaic system, and was on that account cut off from the family, and sent back to his own people, received a full compensation for his services, besides the payment of his expenses.  But that postponement of the circumcision of the foreign servant for a year (or even at all after he had entered the family of an Israelite) of which the Mishnic doctors speak, seems to have been a mere usage.  We find nothing of it in the regulations of the Mosaic system.  Circumcision was manifestly a rite strictly initiatory.  Whether it was a rite merely national or spiritual, or both, comes not within the scope of this inquiry.  Nor does it at all affect the argument. ]

Were the servants forced through all these processes?  Was the renunciation of idolatry compulsory?  Were they dragged into covenant with God?  Were they seized and circumcised by main strength?  Were they compelled mechanically to chew, and swallow, the flesh of the Paschal lamb, while they abhorred the institution, despised its ceremonies, spurned the law which enjoined it, detested its author and executors, and instead of rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemmorated, bewailed it as a calamity, and cursed the day of its consummation?  Were they driven from all parts of the land three times in the year up to the annual festivals?  Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated?  Were they goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with loathed abominations?

We repeat it, to become a servant, was to become a proselyte.  And how did God authorize his people to make proselytes?  At the point of the sword?  By the terror of pains and penalties?  By converting men into merchandise?  Were proselyte and chattel synonymes, in the Divine vocabulary?  Must a man be sunk to a thing before taken into covenant with God?  Was this the stipulated condition of adoption, and the sole passport to the communion of the saints?

2.  We argue the voluntariness of servants from Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, “Thou shall not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee.  He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.”