have dwelt upon your scriptural argument, because you profess to
believe the Bible; because a large proportion of the abolitionists
profess to do the same, and to act under its sanction; because your
circular is addressed in part to "professing Christians;" and because it
is from that class mainly that you expect to seduce converts to your
anti-christian, I may say, infidel doctrines. It would be wholly
unnecessary to answer you, to any one who reads the Scriptures for
himself, and construes them according to any other formula than that
which the abolitionists are wickedly endeavoring to impose upon the
world. The scriptural sanction of slavery is in fact so palpable, and so
strong, that both wings of your party are beginning to acknowledge it.
The more sensible and moderate admit, as the organ of the Free Church of
Scotland, the _North British Review_, has lately done, that they "_are
precluded by the statements and conduct of the Apostles from regarding
mere slaveholding as essentially sinful_," while the desperate and
reckless, who are bent on keeping up the agitation at every hazard,
declare, as has been done in the _Anti-Slavery Record_, "If our inquiry
turns out in favor of slavery, IT IS THE BIBLE THAT MUST FALL, AND NOT
THE RIGHTS OF HUMAN NATURE." You can not, I am satisfied, much longer
maintain before the world the Christian platform from which to wage war
upon our institutions. Driven from it, you must abandon the contest, or,
repudiating REVELATION, rush into the horrors of NATURAL RELIGION.

You next complain that our slaves are kept in bondage by the "law of
force." In what country or condition of mankind do you see human affairs
regulated merely by the law of love? Unless I am greatly mistaken, you
will, if you look over the world, find nearly all certain and permanent
rights, civil, social, and I may even add religious, resting on and
ultimately secured by the "law of force." The power of majorities--of
aristocracies--of kings--nay of priests, for the most part, and of
property, resolves itself at last into "force," and could not otherwise
be long maintained. Thus, in every turn of your argument against our
system of slavery, you advance, whether conscious of it or not, radical
and revolutionary doctrines calculated to change the whole face of the
world, to overthrow all government, disorganize society, and reduce man
to a state of nature--red with blood, and shrouded once more in barbaric
ignorance. Bu