N34072:16
Baxter's directions to slave-holders, revived; first printed in London, in the year 1673
Baxter's directions to slave-holders, revived; first printed in London, in the year 1673. : To which is subjoined, a letter from the worthy Anthony Benezet, late of this city, deceased, to the celebrated abbe Raynal, with his answer, which were first published in the Brussels gazette, March 7, 1782.Baxter's directions to slave-holders, revived; first printed in London, in the year 1673. : To which is subjoined, a letter from the worthy Anthony Benezet, late of this city, deceased, to the celebrated abbe Raynal, with his answer, whch were first published in the Brussels gazette, March 7, 1782.
Philadelphia: printed by Francis Bailey, 1785
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
"What men in the world doth James speak to, if not to you—James v. 1 to 4. Go to now, ye rich men, weep and bowl for your miseries that shall come upon you: Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten: your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire: Ye have heaped treasure, together for the last days: Behold the hire of the labourers which have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped, have entered the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth;" How much more then the cry of betrayed souls?
After these animadversions on the iniquity of holding and treating men as slaves, for the private emolument of the possessors, he proceeds to consider divers cases under which men are held in bondage, from whence he adduces the following conclusions.
"A nominal Christian, who by wickedness forfeiteth his life or freedom, may penally be made a slave as well as an Infidel; and a poor and needy Christian may sell himself into a harder state of servitude than he would choose, or we could otherwise put him into; but to go aspirates, and catch up poor Negroes, or people of another land, that never forfeited life or liberty, and to make them slaves and sell them, is one of the worst kinds of thefts in the world, and such persons are to be taken for the common enemies of mankind; and they that buy them, and use them as beasts for their mere commodity, ⟨p. 7⟩and betray, or destroy, or neglect their souls, are fitter to be called incarnate Devils, than Christians.
"A nominal Christian, who by wickedness forfeiteth his life or freedom, may penally be made a slave as well as an Infidel; and a poor and needy Christian may sell himself into a harder state of servitude than he would chuse, or we could otherwise put him into; but to go aspirates, and catch up poor Negroes, or people of another land, that never forfeited life or liberty, and to make them slaves and sell them, is one of the worst kinds of thefts in the world, and such persons are to be taken for the common enemies of mankind; and they that buy them, and use them as beasts for their mere commodity,