3. But in case a church refuses to discipline slaveholders, as it disciplines other offenders against God, and on the contrary persistently retains them in its communion and officially recognizes them as members of the household of faith,--as holy persons,--as good christians, then a christian can do no better than to withdraw from that church. He cannot remain in it without giving an expressed or implied sanction to a slaveholding christianity. The whole force of his piety and influence will go abroad to create the conviction that slavery is right and quite consistent with holiness. In support of this view of the true position of a church and of christians in relation to slavery, the following additional considerations are submitted: 1. The church is required to be holy. But it cannot approximate to holiness while welcoming into its pale sinners such as slaveholders are, and sanctioning such an impurity as is slavery. 2. The Church is required to be the "pillar and ground of the truth." But a slaveholding church wofully perverts and corrupts the truth in many important particulars. The truth that God hates oppression and robbery for instance, is corrupted by it, for it pronounces the very chief oppressors and robbers the true children of God, and assures the world that He approbates their conduct. It corrupts the truth in relation to the true idea of a christian. It denies that justice, mercy and love, are essential attributes of a christian character, by passing off upon a deluded world a class of persons as christians who are pre-eminently unjust, unmerciful, and full of hate to the human brotherhood. 3. The church should honor the holy scriptures. But a slaveholding church necessarily dishonors them. The church is presumed to be a faithful and competent expounder of the doctrines and moral precepts of the Bible, and hence what it approves, it is supposed, the Bible sanctions, and as it approves of slavery, it gives currency to the idea that the Bible is a pro-slavery book,--that Christianity is favorable to oppression, and an enemy to equality and fraternity. Thus a slaveholding church dishonors the Word of Truth and is an infidel-making organization. Non-fellowship with slaveholding is demanded as a condition of faithfulness to the Bible.