as before remarked, at the expense of the claims
and authority of the Bible:--but these instances of the pernicious
effects of his writings will be very rare, quite too rare we may hope,
to counterbalance the more generally useful tendency of writings on the
subject of slavery, which recognise the paramount authority of God's
law.

Having completed the examination of your book, I wish to hold up to you,
in a single view, the substance of what you have done. You have come
forth, the unblushing advocate of American slavery;--a system which,
whether we study its nature in the deliberate and horrid enactments of
its code, or in the heathenism and pollution and sweat and tears and
blood, which prove, but too well, the agreement of its practical
character with its theory--is, beyond all doubt, more oppressive and
wicked than any other, which the avaricious, sensual, cruel heart of man
ever devised. You have come forth, the unblushing advocate of a system
under which parents are daily selling their children; brothers and
sisters, their brothers and sisters; members of the Church of Christ,
their fellow-members--under which, in a word, immortal man, made "in the
image of God," is more unfeelingly and cruelly dealt with, than the
brute. I know that you intimate that this system would work well, were
it in the hands of none but good men. But with equal propriety might you
say, that the gaming-house or the brothel would work well in such hands.
You have attempted to sustain this system by the testimony of the Bible.
The system, a part only of the crimes of which, most of the nations of
Christendom have declared to be piracy;--against which, the common
sense, the philosophy, the humanity, the conscience of the world, are
arrayed;--this system, so execrable and infamous, you have had the
presumption to attempt to vindicate by that blessed book, whose Author
"is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and (who) cannot look upon
iniquity"--and who "has magnified his word above all his name."

And now, Sir, let me solemnly inquire of you, whether it is right to do
what you have done?--whether it is befitting a man, a Christian, and a
minister of the gospel?--and let me, further, ask you, whether you have
any cheering testimony in your heart that it is God's work you have been
doing? That you and I may, in every future work of our hands, have the
happiness to know, that the approbation of our employer comes from the
upper, and not from the