f the
Apostles were not slaveholders, why may we suppose, that their disciples
were? At the South, it is, "like people, like priest," in this matter.
There, the minister of the gospel thinks, that he has as good right to
hold slaves, as has his parishioner: and your Methodists go so far, as
to say, that even a bishop has as good right, as any other person, to
have slaves

[Footnote B: How strongly does the following extract from the writings
of the great and good Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, argue,
that slaveholding was not a prevalent sin amongst primitive Christians!
"Non opurtet Christianum possidere servum quomodo equum aut argentum.
Quis dicere audeat ut vestimentum cum debere contemni? Hominem namque
homo tamquam seipsum diligere debet cui ab omnium Domino, ut inimicos
diligat, imperatur." _A Christian ought not to hold his servant as he
does his horse or his money. Who dares say that he should be thought as
lightly of as a garment? For man, whom the Lord of all has commanded to
love his enemies, should love his fellow-man as himself._]

"------to fan him while he sleeps,
And tremble when he wakes."

Indeed, they already threaten to separate from their Northern brethren,
unless this right be conceded. But have we not other and conclusive
evidence, that primitive Christians were not slaveholders? We will cite
a few passages from the Bible to show, that it was not the will of the
Apostles to have their disciples hold manual labor in disrepute, as it
is held, in all slaveholding communities. "Do your own business, and
work with your own hands, as we commanded you." "For this we commanded
you, that, if any would not work, neither should he eat." "Let him that
stole, steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands
the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth."
In bringing the whole verse into this last quotation, I may have
displeased you. I am aware, that you slaveholders proudly and
indignantly reject the applicableness to yourselves of the first phrase
in this verse, and also of the maxim, that "the partaker of stolen goods
is as bad as the thief." I am aware, that you insist, that the
kidnapping of a man, or getting possession of him, after he has been
kidnapped, is not to be compared, if indeed it can be properly called
theft at all, with the crime of stealing a _thing_. It occurs to me,
that if a shrewd lawyer had you on trial for theft, he would sa