Now, will any one pretend that it is proper for a christian, having a wife, to take also the wife of a deceased brother? But the law of Moses authorized this as clearly as any one pretends that it authorized slavery. Is it allowable for a christian to take a concubine or marry three or four wives? But the law of Moses allowed this as distinctly as any one believes that it allowed slavery. Would it be right for a christian to pursue a neighbor who had committed accidental or intentional homicide, overtake and slay him? But the law of Moses justified the Jewish man-slayer as plainly as the most ultra defender of slavery maintains that it justified slaveholding. Suppose we admit, for argument sake, that slavery was authorized by the law of Moses, does it follow as a matter of course, that the law of Christ authorizes it? By no means; for we have seen that the former authorized concubinage, polygamy, extermination of the heathen, and summary vengeance upon the unwitting murderer, all of which things are utterly incompatible with the precepts of the latter. And slavery might very properly be placed in the category of those practices allowed by the law, but prohibited by the gospel. Thus the argument for slavery from the law of Moses proves too much, and therefore proves nothing. 2. But if, as is claimed, the Jews _were_ authorized to enslave their fellow men, which we by no means admit, it was by express authority from God, who alone may deprive any of his creatures of the rights with which he has invested them. Express grants _were_ made to the "chosen seed," as for instance, the forcible occupancy of the land of Canaan, and of the cities thereof. Now those grants were not made to Americans, but to the ancient Israelites, and it is neither modest nor sensible for citizens of the United States to act under a charter which they admit was made to an ancient nation, for a temporary purpose. Let the American slaveholder show the same _authority_ for slaveholding which he maintains the Jew could produce. Has God ever made a grant to _Americans_ to enslave the Africans? 3. Again, the passage mainly relied upon is found in Leviticus, 25: 44-47; in which the Jews are authorized to procure servants of the _nations_, (not heathen, for _heathen_ is not in the original) round about them. Now if this celebrated passage be at all to the purpose, it is, as Pres. Edwards has said, "a permission to every nation under heaven to buy slaves of the nations round about them; to us, to buy of our Indian neighbors; to them, to buy of us; to the French to buy of the English, and to the English to buy of the French; and so through the world. Thus according to this construction, we have here an institution of a universal slave trade, by which every man may not only become a merchant, but may rightfully become the merchandize itself of this trade, and be bought and sold like a beast." Who is willing to admit the consequences of this construction?