The position of the church was strongly stated by Jay in a letter to Rev. Hiram Jelliff: "It is one of the most melancholy circumstances of the condition of the coloured people that so many of the ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ are among their most influential enemies. The church of the living God is the great buttress of slavery and caste in the United States. If any plea can be urged in behalf of infidelity, it is that Christianity as represented by multitudes of its official teachers authorizes the abrogation of all its precepts of humility, justice, and benevolence in the treatment of persons to whom God has given a coloured skin. Look at the conventions of New York and Pennsylvania excluding ministers and disciples of the crucified Redeemer merely because they are poor and despised! I confess, my dear sir, that were I a young man, with no early religious impressions and about to decide on the truth or falsehood of revelation, I fear I should be strongly tempted to believe that a religion such as it is practically exhibited by your cotton-parsons could not and did not proceed from a just and benevolent being. I have had great opportunities of knowing the effect produced by the countenance given to slavery and caste by the church on the faith of many kind-hearted and conscientious people, and in all sincerity I declare that our pro-slavery clergy, our negro-hating clergy, our slave-catching clergy, are the most successful apostles of infidelity in the country. I write thus freely to you because your course is in direct opposition to those I condemn. The Saviour eat, drank, and lodged with the Samaritans, who were the negroes of Judea, a despised, degraded caste, from whom a Jew disdained to receive even a cup of water.... May God bless and reward your labours."