As to his own Connection, the Presbyterian, he would go as fully as his materials permitted, into the proof of their past principles, and present posture. And in the first place he was most happy to be able to present them with an abstract of the decisions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. He found it printed in the New York Observer, of May 23, 1835, embodied in the proceedings of the Presbytery of Montrose, and transcribed by it no doubt from the Assembly's digest. As early as A. D. 1787, the Synod of N. York and Philadelphia issued an opinion adverse to slavery, and recommended measures for its final extinction; and in the year 1796 the General Assembly assured "all the churches under their care, that they viewed with the deepest concern any vestiges of slavery which then existed in our country;" and in the year 1815 the same judicatory decided, "that the buying and selling of slaves by way of traffic, (meaning, doubtless, the domestic traffic,) is inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel." But in the year 1818, a more full and explicit avowal of the sentiments of the church was unanimously agreed on in the General Assembly. "We consider, (say the Assembly,) the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoin, that "whatever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." They add, "It is manifestly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when the inconsistency of slavery, both with the dictates of humanity and religion, has been demonstrated, and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest and unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible, to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom and if possible, throughout the world."