ospel, if once possessed by them, would be apt to lead
them on to greater attainments. Indeed, the love, peace, truth, and
other elements of holy living inculcated by the Apostles, would, if
turned to all proper account, be fatal to every, even the most gigantic,
system of wickedness. Having these elements in their minds and hearts,
they would not fail of condemning the great and compound sin of war
whenever they should be led to take it up, examine it, resolve it into
its constituent parts, and lay these parts for comparison, by the side
of those elements. But, such an advance was hardly to be expected from
many of these heathen converts during the brief period in which they
enjoyed Apostolic instruction; and it is but too probable, that most of
them died in great ignorance of the sin of national wars. Converts from
the heathen, in the present age, when conviction of the sinfulness of
war is spreading in different parts of Christendom, would be more likely
to imbibe correct views of it.

The Apostles "fed with milk" before they fed with meat, as did our
Saviour, who declared, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now." In every community, the foundation principles of
righteousness must be laid, before there can be fulcrums for the levers
to be employed in overthrowing the sins which prevail in it. You will
doubtless, then, agree with me, that it is not probable that the
Apostles taught their heathen converts, directly and specifically, the
sinfulness of war. But slaves, in that age, with the exception of the
comparative few who were reduced to slavery on account of the crimes of
which they had been judicially convicted, were the spoils of war. How
often in that age, as was most awfully the fact, on the final
destruction of Jerusalem, were the slave-markets of the world glutted by
the captives of war! Until, therefore, they should be brought to see the
sinfulness of war, how could they see the sinfulness of so direct and
legitimate a fruit of it as slavery?--and, if the Apostles thought their
heathen converts too weak to be instructed in the sinfulness of war, how
much more would they abstain from instructing them, directly and
specifically, in the sin of slavery!

3d. In proceeding with my reasons why the Apostles did not extend their
specification of sins to slavery, I remark, that it is apparent from the
views we have taken, and from others which might have been taken, that
nothing would h