It is in this case of an Hebrew servant, that we are to look for the genuine Mosaic principles of slavery. Even here the law expresses a jealousy of the master’s conduct, and guards against the abuse of his authority, restricting it to six years, and prescribing the manner of exercising it. Therefore when the Jews are allowed to make perpetual slaves of the Heathen, we are to consider it as a particular dispensation respecting their situation among idolaters, by which, in every slave, they made a proselyte to the true religion; or like divorces, an indulgence to their hardness of heart, which was not then capable of the purity and benevolence of the gospel, by which, marriage was made perpetual, and all men were to be treated as brethren. We can infer the doctrine of perpetual slavery as little from its permission to the Jews, as we can the keeping of concubines from the practice of Abraham, or David. Divorces are permitted to the Jews in similar expressions with the permission to hold slaves; yet our Saviour tells us, it was not so from the beginning. Moses (Deut. xvii. 14.) gives directions for the choice and duty of a king, yet Samuel tells the Jews, they had offended God in asking for a king. And though God condescended to give them a king in a manner which more unequivocally shewed his assent, than that approbation, sanction and command, which the author incautiously affirms to be given to the “slave-trade;” yet Samuel concludes them to be not the less guilty, for persevering in the request. We should be more careful than this author shews himself, how we apply our ignorant conjectures to the divine conduct; as p. 16, “Without allowing the licitness of the slave-trade, it is impossible to reconcile the justice of God with his own scriptural decisions concerning its nature;” that (p. 32) “God, without a glaring opposition to the rights of his justice, could not have approved the conduct of Joseph in enslaving the Ægyptians, and inflicted a lasting punishment on Reuben for his incest, if his enslaving of the Ægyptians had been a crime.” These expressions would be shocking from an infidel; in what an horrid cause doth a clergyman use them?