Excerpt from Statements Respecting the American Abolitionists: By Their Opponents and Their Friends; Indicating the Present Struggle Between Slavery and Freedom in the United States of America

From the Fifteenth Report of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society, 1847. Under the head The Church.

We came to the church in the beginning, accepting it as what it professed to be, a divinely established institution for the removal of all sin, and asked it to help us in the removal of this aggregate of all sins. And it has only been where we have found her the ally instead of the enemy of slavery, that we have denounced, not the Church of Christ, but the Church of America.

From the Sixteenth Report of the same society, 1848. Under same head.

The American church has done nothing during the past year to change its character as the bulwark of slavery. [examples of church action follow.] The Covenanters, almost alone of all the American sects, maintain a consistent and undeviating testimony against slavery, and they have reiterated their words of witness this year as in years gone by. The Free Will Baptists have also, by a protest signed by a great number of their ministers, uplifted their voices against this crying iniquity, and proclaimed their determination to labor for its overthrow. And it gives us much pleasure to mention the rare, the almost unique example of a British clergyman, visiting America on an ecclesiastical mission, and maintaining a faithful and uncompromising testimony against slavery. This was the Rev. Dr. Jabez Burns, who visited the Baptist churches in this country, and we believe maintained the integrity of British abolitionism amidst the pro-slavery influences of our religious atmosphere.

From the Seventeenth Report of the same society, 1849. Under same head.

The Free Will Baptist denomination last spring put forth a protest and declaration of sentiments on the subject of slavery. It was signed by six hundred and sixteen ministers, and expressed views and resolutions, which, if enforced and lived out, would go far towards exonerating the Connexion from the guilt of sustaining slavery.

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.