2. While, therefore, John the Baptist; with marked fidelity and great power, acted among the Jews the part of a _reprover_, he found no occasion to repeat and apply the language of his predecessors,[73] in exposing and rebuking idolatry and slaveholding. Could he, the greatest of the prophets, have been less effectually aroused by the presence of "the yoke," than was Isaiah?--or less intrepid and decisive in exposing and denouncing the sin of oppression under its most hateful and injurious forms? [Footnote 73: Psalm lxxxii; Isa. lviii. 1-12 Jer. xxii. 13-16.] 3. The Savior was not backward in applying his own principles plainly and pointedly to such forms of oppression as appeared among the Jews. These principles, whenever they have been freely acted on, the Princeton professor admits, have abolished domestic bondage. Had this prevailed within the sphere of our Savior's ministry, he could not, consistently with his general character, have failed to expose and condemn it. The oppression of the people by lordly ecclesiastics, of parents by their selfish children, of widows by their ghostly counsellors, drew from his lips scorching rebukes and terrible denunciations.[74] How, then, must he have felt and spoke in the presence of such tyranny, if _such tyranny had been within his official sphere_, as should _have made widows_, by driving their husbands to some flesh-market, and their children not orphans, _but cattle_? [Footnote 74: Matt. xxiii; Mark, vii. 1-13.]