A Defence of Virginia: And Through Her, of the South, in Recent and Pending Contests Against the Sectional PartyDabney, Robert Lewis
History
A Defence of Virginia: And Through Her, of the South, in Recent and Pending Contests Against the Sectional Party
Dabney, Robert Lewis
Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; Slavery -- United States -- History; Slavery -- Virginia
One passage of the New Testament remains to be noticed. It is that
which commands the exclusion of Abolitionist teachers from church
communion, 1 Tim. vi. 3-5. St. Paul had just enjoined on this young
minister the giving of proper moral instruction to servants. The
pulpit was to teach them the duty of subordination to masters, as to
rightful authority; and if those masters were also Christians, then
the obligation was only the stronger. See v. 1, 2. The apostle then
proceeds, v. 3, "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to
wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the
doctrine which is according to godliness," (the opposite teaching of
abolitionism contradicts Christ's own word,) "he is proud, knowing
nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof
cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of
men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain
is godliness: from such withdraw thyself."
The more carefully these words of the Holy Ghost are considered, the
more exceedingly remarkable will they appear. Doubtless, every reader
of previous ages has felt a slight trace of wonder, that the apostle
should have left on record a rebuke of such particularity, sternness,
and emphasis, when there appeared nothing in the opinions or abuses of
the Christian world, of sufficient importance quite to justify it. We
have no evidence that, either in the primitive or mediæval church, any
marked disposition prevailed to assail the rights of masters over
their slaves, to such extent as to threaten the disorganization of
civil society or the dishonouring of Christianity thereby. This
denunciation of the apostle seems to have been sufficient to give the
_quietus_ to the spirit of abolition, so long as any reverence for
inspiration remained. Even while the policy of the Roman Church and
clergy was steadily directed to the extinction of feudal slavery in
Western Europe, it does not appear that the doctors of that church
assailed the master's rights or preached insubordination to the
slaves. Why then did St. Paul judge it necessary to leave on record so
startling a denunciation? The question is answered by the events of
our age: these words were written for us on whom these ends of the
world have come. And we have here a striking proof that his pen was
guided by omniscient foreknowledge. The God who told Paul what to
write, foresaw that though the primitive church stood in comparatively
slight need of such admonitions, the century would come, after the
lapse of eighteen ages, when the church would be invaded and defiled
by the deadly spirit of modern abolitionism, a spirit perverse, blind,
divisive and disorganizing, which would become the giant scourge and
opprobrium of Christianity. Therefore has this stern warning been
recorded here, and left standing until events should make men
understand both its wisdom and the lineaments of the monster which it
foreshadowed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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