ge 213.

ARTICLE III.

OUR WRETCHEDNESS IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE PREACHERS OF THE RELIGION
OF JESUS CHRIST.

RELIGION, my brethren, is a substance of deep consideration among all
nations of the earth. The Pagans have a kind, as well as the
Mahometans, the Jews and the Christians. But pure and undefiled
religion, such as was preached by Jesus Christ and his apostles, is
hard to be found in all the earth. God, through his instrument, Moses,
handed a dispensation of his divine will to the children of Israel
after they had left Egypt for the land of Canaan, or of Promise, who
through hypocrisy, oppression, and unbelief, departed from the faith.
He then, by his apostles handed a dispensation of his, together with
the will of Jesus Christ, to the Europeans in Europe, who, in open
violation of which, have made _merchandize_ of us, and it does appear
as though they take this very dispensation to aid them in their
infernal depredations upon us. Indeed, the way in which religion was
and is conducted by the Europeans and their descendants, one might
believe it was a plan fabricated by themselves and the _devils_ to
oppress us. But hark! my master has taught me better than to believe
it--he has taught me that his gospel as it was preached by himself and
his apostles remains the same, notwithstanding Europe has tried to
mingle blood and oppression with it.

It is well known to the Christian world that Bartholomew Las Casas,
that very notoriously avaricious Catholic priest or preacher, and
adventurer with Columbus in his second voyage, proposed to his
countrymen, the Spaniards in Hispaniola, to import the Africans from
the Portuguese settlement in Africa, to dig up gold and silver, and
work their plantations for them, to effect which, he made a voyage
thence to Spain, and opened the subject to his master, Ferdinand, then
in declining health, who listened to the plan; but who died soon
after, and left it in the hands of his successor, Charles V.[12]--This
wretch, ("Las Cassas, the Preacher,") succeeded so well in his plans
of oppression, that in 1503, the first blacks had been imported into
the new world. Elated with this success, and stimulated by sordid
avarice only, he importuned Charles V. in 1511, to grant permission
to a Flemish merchant to import 4000 blacks at one time. Thus we see,
through the instrumentality of a pretended preacher of the gospel of
Jesus Christ our common master, our wretchedness first commenced in