mong us. You may unfetter them from the
chains of ignorance, you may emancipate them from the bondage of
sin--the worst slavery to which they can be subjected--and by thus
setting at liberty those that are bruised, though they still continue to
be your slaves, they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty of the children of God."[527:A]

The Rev. Jonathan Boucher, was born in Cumberland County, England, in
1738, and brought up at Wigton Grammar School. He came over to Virginia
at the age of sixteen, and was nominated by the vestry of Hanover
Parish, in the County of King George, before he was in orders. Returning
to England for ordination, he recrossed the Atlantic, and entered upon
the duties of that parish on the banks of the Rappahannock. He removed
soon afterwards to St. Mary's Parish, in Caroline County, upon the same
river. After remaining here a good many years and enjoying the esteem
of his people, he removed to Maryland, and was there ejected from his
rectory at the breaking out of the Revolution, when he returned to
England. His Discourses, preached between 1763 and 1775, were published
by him when he was Vicar of Epsom, in Surrey, in 1797.

Abraham, the father of the faithful, was a slaveholder; upon his death
his servants passed by descent to his son Isaac, as in like manner those
of Isaac descended to Jacob. They were hereditary bondsmen, and, like
chattels, bought and sold. Job, a pattern of piety, was a slaveholder,
and, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims
to a character of high and exemplary virtue from the manner in which he
discharged his duty to his slaves.

The master who faithfully performs his duties toward his slaves is a
high example of virtue, and the slave who renders his service faithfully
is worthy of equal commendation. If the rights of the slave are narrow,
his duties are proportionally limited.

The institution of slavery, divinely appointed, was maintained for five
hundred years in Abraham's family. When the patriarchal dispensation
came to an end, the right of property in slaves was recognized in the
decalogue. The system was incorporated into the Mosaic law, and so
continued to the end of the Jewish dispensation, and was nowhere
denounced as a moral evil, nor was any reproof uttered by the prophets
against the system on account of the evils connected with it.

The primitive Christian church consisted largely of slaveh