But he made law regulating the relation under Greek and Roman
slavery, which was the most oppressive in the world.
God saw that these regulations would ultimately remove the evils in the
Greek and Roman systems, and do it away entirely from the fitness of
things, as there existing; for Greek and Roman slaves, for the most part,
were the equals in all respects of their masters. AEsop was a slave;
Terence was a slave. The precepts in Colossians iv. 18, 23, 1 Tim. vi.
1-6, and other places, show, unanswerably, that God as really sanctioned
the relation of master and slave as those of husband and wife, and parent
and child; and that all the obligations of the moral law, and Christ's law
of love, might and must be as truly fulfilled in the one relation as in
the other. The fact that he has made the one set of relations permanent,
and the other more or less dependent on conditions of mankind, or to pass
away in the advancement of human progress, does not touch the question. He
sanctioned it under the Old Testament and the New, and ordains it now
while he sees it best to continue it, and he now, as heretofore, proclaims
the duty of the master and the slave. Dr. Parker's admirable explanation
of Colossians, and other New Testament passages, saves me the necessity of
saying any thing more on the Scripture argument.
One word on the Detroit resolutions, and I conclude.
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