“These facts,” the address continues, “which are only mentioned here as reasons for the friendly admonition which we wish to give you, constrain us, as your pastors, who are called to watch over your souls, as they who must give an account, to exhort you to abstain from all abolition movements and associations, and to refrain from patronizing any of their publications, and especially from those of that inflammatory character which denounce in unmeasured terms those of the brethren who take the liberty to dissent from them.” * * * * “From every view of the subject which we have been able to take, and from the most calm and dispassionate survey of the whole ground, we have come to the solemn conviction that the only _safe_, _scriptural_ and _prudent_ way for us, both as ministers and people, to take, is wholly to refrain from this agitating subject which is now convulsing the country, and consequently the Church, from end to end, by calling forth inflammatory speeches, papers and pamphlets. While we cheerfully accord to such all the sincerity they ask for their belief and motives, we can not but disapprove of their measures as alike destructive to the peace of the Church and the happiness of the slave.”—_Bangs’ History of the M. E. Church, vol. 4, pp. 258, 260._ It is patent to every candid observer that the Church in 1836 did not consider the subject of slavery as the “sum of all evils,” and therefore to be extirpated at whatever cost to Church and State, but rather that the danger to the peace of the Church and country was not in slavery itself, but in the “abolition movements,” “speeches and papers” that were “convulsing the country and Church from end to end,” and “that the only _safe_, _scriptural_ and _prudent_ way for both ministers and people was wholly to refrain from this agitating subject.” Slavery was, according to this address, “_beyond the control of all ecclesiastical bodies_,” and it would have been fortunate for the peace and welfare of both the Church and the country had it remained beyond their control, and had the teachings and deliverances of all ecclesiastical bodies upon this subject remained just as this General Conference expressed it in 1836. Slavery remained unchanged; and if it was “safe, scriptural and prudent” for the Church in ’36 to let it alone, and leave it under the “control of the State legislatures,” where “the constitutional compact which binds us together as a nation placed it,” why was it not “safe, scriptural and prudent” to do the same in ’44? Did slavery, as a domestic, moral or civil institution present any new aspects in 1844? What civil or moral questions were applicable to slavery in 1844 that did not equally apply in 1836 or 1796? Had slavery just been admitted into the Church for the first time, then those who contend that it was the cause of division would have some show of reason. If slavery was the “sum of all villainy” in 1844 it was in 1798, unless time can change the