2. Slaveholders ought not to be excluded from the church, it is argued, because their views and feelings on the subject of slavery have been corrupted by the prevalence of this popular sin. They are not, it is maintained, individually responsible--the fault--the sin, the shame attaches to a false public morality. Dr. McClintock offers this objection in the following words: "Their position," he says, "has the eminent unhappiness of almost necessitating a feeble or corrupt moral sense on this subject; they are carried along by a great movement that absorbs their individuality, so to speak; the personal conscience is lost in the general sense of the community. The great work to be done is to purify that general sense; not to curse and malign individual slaveholders, but to break up the false public morality in which the system finds its main support."[22] We answer that no man is excusable for falling in with a "great movement" which is manifestly wicked. Noah, Lot, Abraham and Elijah were not carried along with sin in this way. Their moral sense was neither enfeebled nor corrupted by the prevailing vices. The apostles did not lose their "personal conscience" in the "general sense" of idolatrous communities, in the midst of which they labored. And in _no case_ does the Bible excuse a sinner because of the prevalence of sin.--Idolaters were not taken into church because that vice was sustained by law and prevailing custom. And he who lived in Corinth in the days of St. Paul, found himself in the midst of gross, shameless sensuality--and it was quite easy for such a person to fall in with the vices for which that city was notorious; and some Christians did fall in with those vices. But did St. Paul excuse them, and forbid their expulsion from the church, throwing the blame of their conduct upon the prevailing vice? Did he ordain that until the "general sense" were purified, the "fornicator," the "incestuous person" and the "drunkard" must remain in the church? By no means. He knew that the _public_ conscience was made up of _individual_ consciences--that public corruption was the aggregate of individual corruption--and hence that the only possible method of reaching and purifying the general sense, was by reaching and purifying the individual sense. And hence individual purity was required as a condition of church membership. Churches now proceed precisely upon this principle in relation to all sins, however prevalent, slavery excepted; and no good reason can be offered for making it an exception. And if slaveholders _have_ an enfeebled moral sense, which is certainly the case, it is because the ministry and church have been recreant to duty and truth, and have said to them "peace, peace, when God had not spoken peace." The only way to prevent them from being swept along by the flood tides of this devastating iniquity until they launch upon the shoreless sea of wrath, is to sound the alarm! But alas, those watchmen who have their ear are