New Testament! Well says Gibbon,
"Heroines of such a cast may claim admiration; but they were most
assuredly neither lovely nor very susceptible of love."

II. Mr. Newman says, that undue credit has been claimed for Christianity
as the foe and extirpator of slavery. He says that, at this day, the
"New Testament is the argumentative stronghold of those who are trying
to keep up the accursed system." Would it not have been candid to add,
that the New Testament has ever been also the stronghold of those who
oppose it, as well in this country as in America? It is on the express
ground to its supposed inconsistency with the maxims and spirit of
Christianity, that the great mass of Abolitionists hate and loathe it.
A public clamor against it was never raised in the days of ancient
slavery, nor is now in any country where Christianity is unknown.
The opposition to it in our own country was a religious one; that we
know full well; and so is the opposition of the American Abolitionists
at the present day. If selfish cupidity, on the one hand, appeals to
the New Testament for its continuance, so does philanthropy, on the
other, for its abolition; and though in my judgment the inferences of
the latter are far more reasonable, the mere fact that both parties
appeal to the book shows that the New Testament neither sanctions
it--rather the contrary by implication--nor expressly denounces
it;--Mr. Newman doubtless can do it safely. This very moderation of
language, however, has to many minds, and those of no mean capacity,
(the late Dr. Chalmers for example,) been regarded as an indication
of the wisdom which has presided over the construction of the New
Testament; it was not only a tone peremptorily demanded by the
necessary conditions of publishing Christianity at all, but was best
adapted,--nay, alone adapted,--in the actual condition of the world
in relation to slavery, to make any salutary impression.

Admitting that the great, the primary end of the Gospel was spiritual;
that it was the object of the Apostles to obtain for it a dispassionate
hearing among all nations; and that, however they might hope
indirectly to affect the temporal prosperity and political welfare of
mankind, all good of this kind was in their view subordinate to that
spiritual amelioration, which, if affected, would necessarily involve
all inferior social and political improvements;--I say, admitting this,
it is really difficult to imagine any other course