Again (p. 21):
If language can convey a clear and definite meaning at all, I know not how it can more plainly or unequivocally present to the mind any thought or idea, than the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus clearly and unequivocally establishes the fact that slavery was sanctioned by God himself, and that buying, selling, holding and bequeathing slaves, as property, are regulations which are established by himself.
What language can more explicitly show, not that God winked at slavery merely, but that, to say the least, he gave a written permit to the Hebrews, then the best people in the world, to buy, hold and bequeath, men and women, to perpetual servitude! What, now, becomes of the position of the Chillicothe Presbytery? * * * * Is it, indeed, a fact, that God once gave a written permission to his own dear people [“ye shall buy”] to do that which is in itself sinful? Nay, to do that which the Chillicothe Presbytery says “is a heinous sin and scandal”?
God resolves that his own children may, or rather “shall,” “buy, possess and hold,” bond-men and bond-women, in bondage, forever. But the Chillicothe Presbytery resolves that “buying, selling, or holding slaves, for the sake of gain, is a heinous sin and scandal.”
We do not mean to say that Mr. Smylie had the internal slave-trade directly in his mind in writing these sentences; but we do say that no slave-trader would ask for a more explicit justification of his trade than this.
Lastly, in regard to that dissolution of the marriage relation, which is the necessary consequence of this kind of trade, the following decisions have been made by judicatories of the church.
The Savannah River (Baptist) Association, in 1835, in reply to the question,
Whether, in a case of involuntary separation, of such a character as to preclude all prospect of future intercourse, the parties ought to be allowed to marry again?