w him, if he had not
seen that thought was stifled, that liberty was crushed, that conscience
was violated in the name of the Gospel? Would not this same Gospel have
presented itself under a different aspect to Parker, Channing, and the
other Unitarians of Boston, if they had seen it at its post, the post of
honor, at the head of all generous ideas and true liberties? Yes; there
are Abolitionists who reject the Bible because they have heard certain
orthodox Christians maintain that the Bible is in favor of slavery.
Whoever preaches this, is of a school of impiety.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.

How did they set to work to preach this? I will answer this question by
two others: How did Bossuet set to work to write his _Politique tiree de
l'Ecriture,_ to proclaim in the name of the Bible obligatory monarchy,
divine right, the absolute authority of kings, the duty of destroying
false religion by force, the duty of officially sustaining the truth,
the duty of having a budget of modes of worship, the duty of uniting
Church and State, without speaking of his Biblical apology for war, for
the use of Louis XIV.? How did certain doctors among the Roundheads, in
their turn, set to work to proclaim the divine right of republics, and
to ordain the massacre of the new Amalekites? The method is very simple:
it consists only in confounding the law with the Gospel. This confusion
once wrought, the political and civil institutions of the Old Testament
lose their temporary and local character, and we go to the New
Testament in search of what is not there: namely, political and civil
institutions.

Though the Gospel is not the law, it is a truth which has been making
its way since the seventeenth century, and which seems to be no longer
contested to-day, except in the camp of the champions of slavery. The
Gospel, which addresses itself to all nations and all ages, does not
pretend to force them into the strait vestments of the ancient Jewish
nation; no more does it pretend to "sew a piece of new cloth on an old
garment, else the new cloth taketh away from the old, and the rent is
made worse." I speak here with a view to those who, in the law as in the
Gospel, in the New Testament as in the Old, venerate the infallible word
of God. A revelation, to be divine, does not cease to be progressive,
and nothing exacts that all truths should be promulgated in a single
day. If God deemed proper to give to his people, so long as