Bible View Of Slavery By John PDF Download

Excerpt from Bible View of Slavery, by John H. Hopkins, Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont Testaments, which, as the written word of God, afford the only infallible standard of moral rights and obligations: " "and thus [by the Southern slaves becoming Christianized through slavery] the wisdom and goodness of God are vindicated in the sanction which his Word has given, and the sentence originally passed upon Canaan, as a curse, has been converted into a blessing" (p.16);and again: "Under the rule of the Scriptures and the Constitution of the United States, the negro belongs to an inferior race, which the law did not presume to be fitted for freedom at any age" (p.12); and finally: "God, in his wisdom and providence, caused the patriarch Noah to predict that he [the negro] should be the servant of servants to the posterity of Japhet (p.12). This, then, is the proposition, that the negro slavery of the Southern States is justified by Holy Scripture. In the examination of the writer's arguments, therefore, we have nothing to do directly with Hebrew slavery, or Greek slavery, or Roman slavery, or any other system than that now in force in the slaveholding states of the Union. The writer divides his arguments into two main heads, those from the Old Testament and those from the New Testament Scriptures. The most of these have necessarily nothing to do with the subject under discussion, as they relate exclusively to the special enactments for the regulation of the Hebrew social system. By way of introduction the writer asserts that "Slavery appears to have existed in all the ages of our world, by the universal evidence of history, whether sacred or profane." It may be sufficient to set over against this, the assertion of one certainly not less eminent in the church than the author of the pamphlet before us. St. Chrysostom says: "But if you ask whence slavery has its origin, and why it has entered into human life, for I know that many readily ask and are desirous of learning such things, I will tell you; avarice, vulgar display, and insatiable cupidity, begat slavery; since Noah had no slave, Abel had no slave, nor Seth, nor yet those after this;" (Hom. in Epist. ad Ephes.22.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.