“The system of personal servitude was fast disappearing from Western Europe, where the idea had obtained that it was inconsistent with Christian duty for Christians to hold Christians as slaves.  But this charity did not extend to heathen and infidels.  The same system of morality which held the possessions of unbelievers as lawful spoils of war, delivered over their persons also to the condition of servitude.  Hence, in America, the slavery of the Indians, and presently of Negroes, whom experience proved to be much more capable of enduring the hardships of that condition."[324]

And those who were so fortunate as to secure baptism were not freed thereby.[325] In Massachusetts no Negro ever had the courage to seek his freedom through this door, and, therefore, there was no necessity for legislation there to define the question, but in the Southern colonies the law declared that baptism did not secure the liberty of the subject.  As early as 1631 a law was passed admitting no man to the rights of “freemen” who was not a member of some church within the limits of the jurisdiction of the colony.[326] The blessings of a “freeman” were reserved for church-members only.  Negroes were not admitted to the church, and, therefore, were denied the rights of a freeman.[327] Even the mother country had no bowels of compassion for the Negro.  In 1677 the English courts held that a Negro slave was property.

     “That, being usually bought and sold among merchants as
     merchandise, and also being infidels, there might be a
     property in them sufficient to maintain trover."[328]

So as “infidels” the Negro slaves of Massachusetts were deprived of rights and duties belonging to a member of the Church and State.

“Zealous for religion as the colonists were, very little effort was made to convert the Negroes, owing partly, at least, to a prevalent opinion that neither Christian brotherhood nor the law of England would justify the holding Christians as slaves.  Nor could repeated colonial enactments to the contrary entirely root out this idea, for it was not supposed that a colonial statute could set aside the law of England."[329]

But the deeper reason the colonists had for excluding slaves from baptism, and hence citizenship, was twofold; viz., to keep in harmony with the Mosaic code in reference to “strangers” and “Gentiles,” and to keep the door of the Church shut in the face of the slave; because to open it to him was to emancipate him in course of time.  Religious and secular knowledge were not favorable to slavery.  The colonists turned to the narrow, national spirit of the Old Testament, rather than to the broad and catholic spirit of the New Testament, for authority to withhold the mercies of the Christian religion from the Negro slaves in their midst.