The minds of the Jews had been broken and debased by the Egyptian bondage; the law was given them as a school-master to train them up for the perfect religion of the gospel. Their conduct in the wilderness, their frequent rebellions amidst miracles, and in the immediate presence of their Divine Deliverer, can only be imagined by those who have had opportunities of seeing how man is shorn of his worth by slavery. Only two men of all who were grown up when they came out of Egypt, were thought deserving to enter into Canaan. That whole generation must be worn out in the wilderness; and their children must be trained for 40 years before they are permitted to take possession. Their laws therefore respected the hardness of their hearts, though founded on principles which led insensibly to perfection. Thus while the perpetuity of the servitude of the Heathens condescended to the hardness of their hearts, the easy temporary service of their brethren looked forward to the gospel times, not differing, but in being for a fixed period, from modern servitude for wages in free states. Therefore when this writer, p. 39. calls this latter service, “A Slave Trade;” the meaning of the terms is perverted. Or let him reduce his Leverpool slave trade to the circumstances of a Jew serving his brother for six years, and we shall have few objections to bring against it. What he calls there “selling him again,” was transferring his service to another brother (not an Heathen) for the remainder of the term, as an apprentice is turned over to a second master. Page 40. “If a Hebrew servant had married a wife with consent of his master, she and her child became her master’s property for ever.” This seems not to be candidly expressed. This wife must have been an Heathen slave, for Hebrew women had the privilege of the Sabbatical year; but if he chose to continue with his wife, he had only to renew his contract with his master. Indeed the regulation appears to have been intended as a check to the connection with slaves in the poor reduced Hebrews. Page 41, 42. When he speaks of the (Leverpool) “slave trade having the sanction of being encouraged, almost commanded, and even enjoined, to be prosecuted by the Supreme Legislator,” he puts opposition to silence. But when, p. 43. he talks of “the Almighty’s forgetting himself, when he encouraged the slave trade, if it be a crime,” I am happy for his sake to recollect, that the author tells us, till he was 27 years old, he knew not the value of an English expression. Page 43. The slavery of the Gibeonites.