“For you must both of you bear in mind that you remain still, as really and truly as ever, your Master’s Property, and therefore it will be justly expected, both by God and Man, that you behave and conduct yourselves as Obedient and faithfull Servants towards your respective Masters & Mistresses for the Time being: “And finally, I exhort and Charge you to beware lest you give place to the Devel, so as to take occasion from the license now given you, to be lifted up with Pride, and thereby fall under the Displeasure, not of Man only, but of God also; for it is written, that God resisteth the Proud but giveth Grace to the humble. “I shall now conclude with Prayer for you, that you may become good Christians, and that you may be enabled to conduct as such; and in particular, that you may have Grace to behave suitably towards each Other, as also dutifully towards your Masters & Mistresses, Not with Eye Service as Men pleasers, ye Servants of Christ doing ye Will of God from ye heart, &c. “[ENDORSED] “NEGRO MARRIAGE.” We have given the above form of marriage, _verbatim et literatim_. In 1641, the Massachusetts Colony passed the following law:-- “There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage, or captivitie amongst us unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages, which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require. This exempts none from servitude, who shall be judged thereto by authority.” In 1646, one James Smith, a member of a Boston church, brought home two negroes from the coast of Guinea, and had been the means of killing near a hundred more. In consequence of this conduct, the General Court passed the following order:-- “The General Court conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is passed, and such a law for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter with others unlawfully taken, be by the first opportunity at the charge of the country for the present, sent to his native country (Guinea) and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof desiring our honored Governor would please put this order in execution.” From this time till about 1700, the number of slaves imported into Massachusetts was not large. In 1680, Governor Simon Bradstreet, in answer to inquiries from “the lords of his Majesty’s privy council,” thus writes:--