healthy and prosperous state, while it slumbers and nurses in
its bosom so great an evil."
In reply to the challenge to produce one instance of a slave trading
Methodist, I give the following from "Zion's Watchman," a Methodist
newspaper, published in New York. It is from a letter of a
correspondent of that paper:
"A man came among us where I was preaching, a class-leader,
from Georgia, having a regular certificate, who appeared to
be very zealous, exhorting and praying in our meetings, &c. I
thought I had got an excellent helper; but, on inquiring his
business, I found he was a SLAVE TRADER: come on purpose to
buy up men, women, and children, to drive to the South!!! I
expostulated with him; but he said it was not thought wrong
where he came from. I told him we could not countenance such
a thing here, and that we could hold no fellowship with him."
He farther told me that on inquiring of a slave he had with
him, what sort of a master he was, he replied, "I have had
four masters, but this is the most cruel of them all;" and
told him, as a proof of it, to look at his back, which, said
the minister, "was cut with a whip, from his head to his
heels!!" The Rev. S. W. Wilson, of Andover, United States,
gives also an extract of a letter he had seen from a
gentleman of high standing, who was at the South at the time
of writing, which says, "The South is too much interested in
the continuance of slavery, to hear any thing upon the
subject. The preachers of the gospel are in the same
condemnation, and METHODIST PREACHERS ESPECIALLY. The
principal reason why the Methodists in these regions are more
numerous and popular than other denominations is, THEY STICK
SO CLOSELY TO SLAVERY!! THEY DENOUNCE BOTH THE ABOLITIONISTS
AND THE COLONIZATIONISTS."
To show the extent to which THE BAPTIST CHURCHES SHARE THE GUILT OF
THE SYSTEM OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA, it will be sufficient to read an
extract from a letter addressed to the Board of Baptist ministers in
and near London, by the Rev. Lucius Bolles, D. D., the Corresponding
Secretary of the American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions. The
testimony is the stronger, because the whole letter is a carefully
written apology for Southern religious slaveholders, and an attempt to
silence the remonstrances of the English churches.
"There is a pleasing degree of union among the multiplying
thousands of Baptists throughout the land. Brethren from all
parts of the country meet in one General Convention and
co-operate in sending the gospel to the heathen. Our Southern
brethren are liberal and zealous in the promotion of every
holy enterprize for the extension of the gospel. THEY ARE,
GENERALLY, BOTH MINISTERS AND PEOPLE, SLAVE-HOLDERS."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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