both
can be guided by that Spirit, unless sweet water and bitter can come
from the same fountain. This letter, itself, is sufficient to teach any
man, capable of being taught in the ordinary way, that slavery is not,
_in the sight of God, what it is in the sight of the abolitionists_.

I had prepared the argument furnished by this letter for my original
essay; I afterward struck it out, because at that time, so little had
the Bible been examined at the North in reference to slavery, that the
abolitionists very generally thought that this was the only scripture
which Southern slaveholders could find, giving any countenance to their
views of slavery. To test the correctness of this opinion, therefore, I
determined to make no allusion to it at that time.

Now, my dear sir, if from the evidence contained in the Bible to prove
slavery a lawful relation among God's people under every dispensation,
the assertion is still made, in the very face of this evidence, that
slavery has _ever been_ the greatest sin--_everywhere, and under all
circumstances_--can you, or can any sane man bring himself to believe,
that the mind capable of such a decision, is not capable of trampling
the word of God under foot upon any subject?

If it were not known to be the fact, we could not admit that a
Bible-reading man could bring himself to believe, with Dr. Wayland, that
a thing made lawful by the God of heaven, was, notwithstanding, the
greatest sin--and that Moses under the law, and Jesus Christ under the
gospel, had sanctioned and regulated in practice, the greatest known sin
on earth--and that Jesus had left his church to find out as best they
might, that the law of God which established slavery under the Old
Testament, and the precepts of the Holy Ghost which regulate the mutual
duty of master and slave under the New Testament, were laws and
precepts, to sanction and regulate among the people of God the greatest
sin which was ever perpetrated.

It is by no means strange that it should have taken seventeen centuries
to make such discoveries as the above, and it is worthy of note, that
these discoveries were made at last by men who did not appear to know,
at the time they made them, what was in the Bible on the subject of
slavery, and who now appear unwilling that the teachings of the Bible
should be spread before the people--this last I take to be the case,
because I have been unable to get the Northern press to give it
publicity.

Many