How
often in that age, as was most awfully the fact, on the final
destruction of Jerusalem, were the slave-markets of the world glutted by
the captives of war! Until, therefore, they should be brought to see the
sinfulness of war, how could they see the sinfulness of so direct and
legitimate a fruit of it as slavery?--and, if the Apostles thought their
heathen converts too weak to be instructed in the sinfulness of war, how
much more would they abstain from instructing them, directly and
specifically, in the sin of slavery!
3d. In proceeding with my reasons why the Apostles did not extend their
specification of sins to slavery, I remark, that it is apparent from the
views we have taken, and from others which might have been taken, that
nothing would have been gained by their making direct and specific
attacks on the institutions of the civil governments under which they
lived. Indeed, much might have been lost by their doing so. Weak
converts, with still many remains of heathenism about them, might in
this wise have been incurably prejudiced against truths, which, by other
modes of teaching,--by general and indirect instructions,--would
probably have been lodged in their minds.
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