You seem rather confused, Tom. All I need to do is to show that God and Jesus, through the Bible, plainly approve of the institution of slavery. It's not difficult to do so, but why reinvent the wheel? I don't, of course, want to direct you to an unsafe site. Therefore, here are the key points from Pastor Warren's 1861 sermon. If you disagree with them, perhaps you can explain why?
THE SCRIPTURAL VINDICATION OF SLAVERY
by Ebenezer W. Warren
Eph. 5:5-8, “Servants, (bondsmen,) be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ; not with eye service as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service as unto the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” I am to present this morning a Bible exposition of the subject of slavery. A sermon on a topic so unusual to a Southern audience, may need a word of explanation to justify it. Two reasons will be sufficient for this purpose:
1. Slavery forms a vital element of the Divine Revelation to man. Its institution, regulation, and perpetuity, constitute a part of many of the books of the Bible.
God instituted it in the days of Noah, and gave it His sanction again at Mt. Sinai. His Son commended it during his ministry on earth. The holy apostle Paul, exhorted his son Timothy to preach it; and Peter teaches a most important precept as to its obligations.
If God, through Noah, after the flood, and at Sinai, through the Law—if Christ during his ministry, and the apostles in their writings, instituted, regulated and promulgated slavery—it is not less imperative on me, to “declare the whole counsel of God” on this subject, than it is on any other, which the wise and beneficent Creator has seen proper to reveal to man.
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Slavery Ordained and Perpetuated by God
More than two thousand years before the christian era, slavery was instituted by decree of heaven, and published to the world by Noah, a “preacher of righteousness.” Here is the decree, Genesis 9:25-27, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants, shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” The Jews descended from Shem, the Europeans and Americans from Japheth, the Africans from Ham, the father of Canaan.
To show that the above language was the announcement of heaven’s decree concerning slavery, and that Noah was speaking as he was moved by the Holy Spirit, we have only to refer to its explanation and fulfillment by the descendants of Shem, as recorded in the 25th chapter of Leviticus. God gave to Abraham, a descendant of Shem, and to his seed after him the land of the Canaanites, into the possession of which they came in the days of Joshua. After the children of Israel came into the possession of the land, God gave them the following instruction as to bringing the people into bondage: “Both thy bond men and thy bond maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you (these were the descendants of Canaan, and hence called Canaanites), of them shall ye BUY BOND MEN AND BOND MAIDS. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possessions. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for possession; they shall be your bond men forever.” (verses 44-46)
Here is a decree from the Creator, giving to one man the right of holding another in involuntary servitude. Man holding his fellow man as his property, and enjoined to perpetuate that property by inheritance to his children, forever.
Three points are here gained.
1. The establishment of slavery by divine decree.
2. The right to buy and sell men and women into bondage.
3. The perpetuity of the institution by the same authority.
A theocratic government, that is, one in which God, as the ruler, gives immediate direction, was established over the Israelites and continued for about four hundred years. The government was fully organized at Mount Sinai. The Constitution (called the Decalogue) given on that occasion, is considered the basis of all good law, and the standard of moral action, in every age of the world down to the present time – it is as of universal application as the gospel of Christ. It guarantees to the slaveholder the peaceable and unmolested right to his slave property, in language as emphatic as does the Constitution of the United States. Hear its enactment on this subject.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife, nor his MAN SERVANT, not his MAID SERVANT, nor his ox, nor his ass, not anything that is thy neighbor’s”
Is a man entitled to the unmolested occupation of his house? This Divine Constitution guarantees to him the same right to his servants. Has any man the right to interfere with the domestic relation of husband and wife? Equally secure is the relation of master and servant made by this enactment of heaven. Should a man’s right to the exclusive and perpetual possession of his ox, or his ass, or of any other property of which he may be possessed, be secured to him by constitutional enactment? No more so, determined the unerring wisdom of the most high God, than the right of masters to their slaves.
Had God, the Great Law Giver, been opposed to slavery, he would perhaps have said, “thou shalt not hold property in man: thou shalt not enslave thy fellow being, for all men are born free and equal.” Instead of reproving the sin of covetousness, he would have denounced the sin of slavery; but instead of this denunciation, when He became the Ruler of his people, He established, regulated and perpetuated slavery by special enactment, and guaranteed the unmolested rights of masters to their slaves by Constitutional provision.
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CHRIST RECONCILED AND SANCTIONED SLAVERY
The blessed Saviour descended from a slave-holder, Abraham. This “father of the faithful,” held as many bondmen, “born in his house and bought with his money,” as perhaps any slaveholder in the South. When he was chosen out, as the one “in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed,” not a word of Divine disapprobation, on account of his being a slave-holder was uttered.
His descendants, the Jews, up to the time of their national dispersion, were as emphatically a slave-holding people as we Georgians are.
The only qualification which is due to this remark, is founded on the captivity and wars which robbed them of much of their property. Such was the case when the Saviour came among them.
He reproved them for their sins. Calling them the works of the flesh and of the devil. He denounced idolatry, covetousness, adultery, fornification, hypocrisy, and many other sins of less moral turpitude, but never once reproved them for holding slaves; though He alluded to it frequently, yet never with an expression of the slightest disapprobation.
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I desire to meet one plausible, but specious objection to slavery, urged by the abolitionists before I take my seat.
It is said that one single passage in the gospel, imperatively requires every master at once to emancipate his slaves. It is recorded in Mat. 7:12. “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets.”
it is thought, that if the master would desire liberty, were he a slave, he is bound by this rule, to liberate his slave. But his argument is specious, and this construction, if applied to the various relations of life will subvert all the laws and regulations of society and governments.
A criminal is arraigned, tried and found guilty of a violationof the law – but the judge would not desire to be punished were he in the criminal’s place – is he bound therefore to release him? ….
A desire entertained by a servant to be set at liberty, is an unlawful desire, because its accomplishment, would violate the “law” which enjoins perpetual servitude ….
Finally a revolution in the moral sentiment of the world in the favor of slavery will yet be effected. The truly pious of all lands will yet receive the Bible, as God’s Revelation and, with the Bible they will, they must receive the theory, if not the practice of slavery.
Religious fanaticism sets up a human standard, at the bar of which the inspiration of the Bible is tried, and being found to establish, rather than abolish slavery, is condemned as coming in direct conflict with certain principles in human nature, termed the “higher law.” This fanaticism will ultimately enshrine its conceptions of philosophy as the French did reason, as the deity to whom it will pay its adorations. Freedom will become its watchword, Freedom, not only from involuntary servitude, but freedom to reject the Bible – free thinking, free loving, free acting, in a word freedom from all the moral restraints which make society virtuous and desirable.
Thus, ultimately, but certainly, I think, will this spirit of religious fanaticism, terminate in an amalgamation of abolitionism and infidelity. And so subversive of all the better interests of society and of our holy religion, will it prove, that the good and true of all communities will find, that the irresponsible conflict which is now waged between free soilism and slavery will terminate between infidelity, as the result of abolitionism, on the one hand, and the Bible and religion on the other. It requires no prophetic ken to foretell that religion and the Bible must triumph as they always have in the conflicts of the past.
Christianity has had her trials, and is now in some measure, enjoying her triumph. Slavery is her trial now, but a triumph, which shall honor God, and bless humanity awaits her in the future.
