Abolitionists may affect as much sanctity and philanthropy, as they please, and pile their maledictions and execrations on the heads of slave holders mountain high!  They can call them murderers, thieves and robbers to their hearts content!  They can anathematize better men than themselves; and denounce slavery as a curse, an evil, a hardship!  They can call slavery by what name they choose!  For it matters but little what they call it; nor what it really is; nor in what it originated; nor yet, what perpetuates it; nor what our feelings and views may be; for slavery exists in our midst; and has existed in our world as a civil institution, for more than three thousand years:  and when God in his amazing condescension, unbounded benevolence, and infinite mercy vouchsafed to us a revelation of his will; he informed us in language clear and explicit, how we should treat it.  The duties and obligations of ministers, and churches—­of masters and servants, are unfolded and enforced in the Sacred Record; and he that errs, is without excuse.  “But men have become wise above what is written.”  God, alone, was competent to decide what was best for masters and servants, individuals, and nations.  We are all the work of his hands, and it is his prerogative to dictate to us laws for the guidance and regulation of our conduct.  Those, then, who receive the Bible as a revelation of the will of God, and take it as their guide and counsellor; cannot consistently do otherwise, than to treat slavery and slaveholders in accordance with its clear and unmistakable injunctions, warnings and admonitions, a precept or practice from the Sacred Oracles, is practical infidelity; and I here, openly and boldly assert, that no intelligent man, who reads and believes the Bible to be the word of God, ever did, or ever will embrace the extreme views of the abolition party in the United States.  No!  It is impossible:  for they are in direct opposition to the plainest declarations of the inspired writers—­to the whole spirit and tenor of the Sacred Volume.  I care not on whom this may fall; nor where it falls, it is true.  I am well aware, that nine tenths of mankind, neither read nor think for themselves—­particularly on subjects that relate to their duties and obligations to their Creator, or their fellow creatures!  No!  They suffer others to read and think for them; and by the by, they too often commit their consciences, and their souls, to the keeping of those whose object is to secure the fleece, though the devil take the flock!

I have said that God, alone, was competent to decide what was best under the circumstances for masters and servants, individuals and nations.  I have clearly shown in the following chapters, that as masters and servants, and as a nation we cannot do better, than to faithfully observe and carry out the injunctions of Holy Writ—­that the best interests of all concerned will be subserved thereby—­that there is no other safe and practicable course—­that