We argue that they became servants _of their own accord_.

I. Because to become a servant in the family of an Israelite, was to
abjure idolatry, to enter into covenant with God[A], be circumcised in
token of it, bound to keep the Sabbath, the Passover, the Pentecost, and
the Feast of Tabernacles, and to receive instruction in the moral and
ceremonial law. Were the servants _forced_ through all these processes?
Was the renunciation of idolatry _compulsory_? Were they _dragged_ into
covenant with God? Were they seized and circumcised by _main strength_?
Were they _compelled_ mechanically to chew, and swallow the flesh of the
Paschal lamb, while they abhorred the institution, spurned the laws that
enjoined it, detested its author and its executors, and instead of
rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemorated, bewailed it as a
calamity, and cursed the day of its consummation? Were they _driven_
from all parts of the land three times in the year to the annual
festivals? Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated?
Goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting
mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with loathed
abominations? We repeat it, to became a _servant_, was to become a
_proselyte_. And did God authorize his people to make proselytes, at the
point of the sword? by the terror of pains and penalties? by converting
men into _merchandise_? Were _proselyte and chattel_ synonymes, in the
Divine vocabulary? Must a man be sunk to a _thing_ before taken into
covenant with God? Was this the stipulated condition of adoption, and
the sole passport to the communion of the saints?

[Footnote A: Maimonides, who wrote in Egypt about seven hundred years
ago, a contemporary with Jarchi, and who stands with him at the head of
Jewish writers, gives the following testimony on this point: "Whether a
servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be purchased
from the heathen, the master is to bring them both into the covenant."

"But he that is in the _house_ is entered on the eighth day, and he that
is bought with money, on the day on which his master receives him,
unless the slave be _unwilling_. For if the master receive a grown
slave, and he be _unwilling_, his master is to bear with him, to seek to
win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year.
After which, should he _refuse_ so long, it is forbidden to keep him
longer than a year. And the