A clergyman of high rank in the Church, in a sermon to the negroes, thus addresses them: —
Almighty God hath been pleased to make you slaves here, and to give you nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which you are obliged to submit to, as it is his will that it should be so. And think within yourselves what a terrible thing it would be, after all your labours and sufferings in this life, to be turned into hell in the next life; and after wearing out your bodies in service here, to go into a far worse slavery when this is over, and your poor souls be delivered over into the possession of the devil, to become his slaves for ever in hell, without any hope of ever getting free from it. If, therefore, you would be God’s freemen in heaven, you must strive to be good and serve him here on earth. Your bodies, you know, are not your own; they are at the disposal of those you belong to; but your precious souls are still your own, which nothing can take from you if it be not your own fault. Consider well, then, that if you lose your souls by leading idle wicked lives here, you have got nothing by it in this world, and you have lost your all in the next; for your idleness and wickedness is generally found out, and your bodies suffer for it here; and, what is far worse, if you do not repent and amend, your unhappy souls will suffer for it hereafter.
Now, this clergyman was a man of undoubted sincerity. He had read the New Testament, and observed that St. Paul addressed exhortations something like this to slaves in his day.
But he entirely forgot to consider that Paul had not the rights of a republican clergyman; that he was not a maker and sustainer of those laws by which the slaves were reduced to their condition, but only a fellow-sufferer under them. A case may be supposed which would illustrate this principle to the clergyman. Suppose that he were travelling along the highway, with all his worldly property about him, in the shape of bank-bills. An association of highwaymen seize him, bind him to a tree, and take away the whole of his worldly estate. This they would have precisely the same right to do that the clergyman and his brother republicans have to take all the earnings and possessions of their slaves. The property would belong to these highwaymen by exactly the same kind of title — not because they have earned it, but simply because they have got it and are able to keep it.
The head of this confederation, observing some dissatisfaction upon the face of the clergyman, proceeds to address him a religious exhortation to patience and submission, in much the same terms as he had before addressed to the slaves. “Almighty God has been pleased to take away your entire property, and to give you nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which you are obliged to submit to, as it is his will that it should be so. Now, think within yourself what a terrible thing it would be, if, having lost all your worldly property, you should, by discontent and want of resignation, lose also your soul; and, having been robbed of all your property here, to have your poor soul delivered over to the possession of the devil, to become his property for ever in hell, without any hope of ever getting free from it. Your property now is no longer your own; we have taken possession of it; but your precious soul is still your own, and nothing can take it from you but your own fault. Consider well, then, that if you lose your soul by rebellion and murmuring against this dispensation of Providence, you will get nothing by it in this world, and will lose your all in the next.”
Now, should this clergyman say, as he might very properly, to these robbers, “There is no necessity for my being poor in this world, if you will only give me back my property which you have taken from me,” he is only saying precisely what the slaves, to whom he has been preaching, might say to him and his fellow-republicans.
CHAPTER VI.
BUT it may still be said that the apostles might have commanded Christian masters to perform the act of legal emancipation in all cases. Certainly they might, and it is quite evident that they did not.
The professing primitive Christian regarded and treated his slave as a brother; but in the eye of the law he was still his chattel personal — a thing, and not a man. Why did not the apostles, then, strike at the legal relation? Why did they not command every Christian convert to sunder that chain at once? In answer, we say that every attempt at reform which comes from God has proceeded uniformly in this manner — to destroy the spirit of an abuse first, and leave the form of it to drop away of itself afterwards — to girdle the poisonous tree, and leave it to take its own time for dying.
This mode of dealing with abuses has this advantage, that it is compendious and universal, and can apply to that particular abuse in all ages, and under all shades and modifications. If the apostle, in that outward and physical age, had merely attacked the legal relation, and had rested the whole burden of obligation on dissolving that, the corrupt and selfish principle might have run into other forms of oppression equally bad, and sheltered itself under the technicality of avoiding legal slavery. God, therefore, dealt a surer blow at the monster, by singling out the precise spot where his heart beat, and saying to his apostles, “Strike there!”
Instead of saying to the slaveholder, “Manumit your slave,” it said to him, “Treat him as your brother,” and left to the slaveholder’s conscience to say how much was implied in this command.
In the directions which Paul gave about slavery, it is evident that he considered the legal relation with the same indifference with which a gardener treats a piece of unsightly bark, which he perceives the growing vigour of a young tree is about to throw off by its own vital force. He looked upon it as a part of an old effete system of heathenism, belonging to a set of laws and usages which were waxing old and ready to vanish away.
There is an argument which has been much employed on this subject, and which is specious. It is this. That the apostles treated slavery as one of the lawful relations of life, like that of parent and child, husband and wife.
The argument is thus stated: The apostles found all the relations of life much corrupted by various abuses.
They did not attack the relations, but reformed the abuses, and thus restored the relations to a healthy state.
The mistake here lies in assuming that slavery is the lawful relation. Slavery is the corruption of a lawful relation. The lawful relation is servitude, and slavery is the corruption of servitude.
When the apostles came, all the relations of life in the Roman Empire were thoroughly permeated with the principle of slavery. The relation of child to parent was slavery. The relation of wife to husband was slavery. The relation of servant to master was slavery.
The power of the father over his son, by Roman law, was very much the same with the power of the master over his slave.* He could, at his pleasure, scourge, imprison, or put him to death. The son could possess nothing but what was the property of his father; and this unlimited control extended through the whole lifetime of the father, unless the son were formally liberated by an act of manumission three times repeated, while the slave could be manumitted by performing the act only once. Neither was there any law obliging the father to manumit; he could retain this power, if he chose, during his whole life.
Very similar was the situation of the Roman wife. In case she were accused of crime, her husband assembled a meeting of her relations, and in their presence sat in judgment upon her, awarding such punishment as he thought proper.
For unfaithfulness to her marriage-vow, or for drinking wine, Romulus allowed her husband to put her to death.* From this slavery, unlike the son, the wife could never be manumitted; no legal forms were provided. It was lasting as her life.
The same spirit of force and slavery pervaded the relation of master and servant, giving rise to that severe code of slave-law, which, with a few features of added cruelty, Christian America, in the nineteenth century, has re-enacted.
With regard, now, to all these abuses of proper relations, the gospel pursued one uniform course. It did not command the Christian father to perform the legal act of emancipation to his son; but it infused such a divine spirit into the paternal relation, by assimilating it to the relation of
the heavenly Father, that the Christianised Roman would regard any use of his barbarous and oppressive legal powers as entirely inconsistent with his Christian profession. So it ennobled the marriage relation by comparing it to the relation between Christ and his Church; commanding the husband to love his wife, even as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it. It is said of him, “No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church;” “so ought everyone to love his wife, even as himself.” Not an allusion is made to the barbarous, unjust power which the law gave the husband. It was perfectly understood that a Christian husband could not make use of it in conformity with these directions.
In the same manner Christian masters were exhorted to give to their servants that which is just and equitable; and, so far from coercing their services by force, to forbear even threatenings. The Christian master was directed to receive his Christianised slave, “NOT now as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved;” and, as in all these other cases, nothing was said to him about the barbarous powers which the Roman law gave him, since it was perfectly understood that he could not at the same time treat him as a brother beloved and as a slave in the sense of Roman law.
When, therefore, the question is asked, why did not the apostles seek the abolition of slavery? we answer, they did seek it. They sought it by the safest, shortest, and most direct course which could possibly have been adopted.
CHAPTER VII.
BUT did Christianity abolish slavery as a matter of fact? We answer, it did.
Let us look at these acknowledged facts. At the time of the coming of Christ, slavery extended over the whole civilised world. Captives in war were uniformly made slaves, and, as wars were of constant occurrence, the ranks of slavery were continually being reinforced; and, as slavery was hereditary and perpetual, there was every reason to suppose that the number would have gone on increasing indefinitely had not some influence operated to stop it. This is one fact.
Let us now look at another. At the time of the Reformation, chattel-slavery had entirely ceased throughout all the civilised countries of the world; by no particular edict — by no special law of emancipation — but by the steady influence of some gradual, unseen power, this whole vast system had dissolved away, like the snow-banks of winter.
These two facts being conceded, the inquiry arises, What caused this change? If, now, we find that the most powerful organisation in the civilised world at that time did pursue a system of measures which had a direct tendency to bring about such a result, we shall very naturally ascribe it to that organisation.
The Spanish writer, Balmes, in his work entitled “Protestantism compared with Catholicity,” has one chapter devoted to the anti-slavery course of the Church, in which he sets forth the whole system of measures which the Church pursued in reference to this subject, and quotes, in their order, all the decrees of councils. The decrees themselves are given in an Appendix at length, in the original Latin. We cannot but sympathise deeply in the noble and generous spirit in which these chapters are written, and the enlarged and vigorous ideas which they give of the magnanimous and honourable nature of Christianity. They are evidently conceived by a large and noble soul, capable of understanding such views — a soul, grave, earnest, deeply religious, though evidently penetrated and imbued with the most profound conviction of the truth of his own peculiar faith.
We shall give a short abstract from M. Balmes of the early course of the Church. In contemplating the course which the Church took in this period, certain things are to be borne in mind respecting the character of the times.
The process was carried on during that stormy and convulsed period of society which succeeded the breaking up of the Roman empire. At this time all the customs of society were rude and barbarous. Though Christianity, as a system, had been nominally very extensively embraced, yet it had not, as in the case of its first converts, penetrated to the heart, and regenerated the whole nature. Force and violence was the order of the day, and the Christianity of the savage Northern tribes, who at this time became masters of Europe, was mingled with the barbarities of their ancient heathenism. To root the institution of slavery out of such a state of society required, of course, a very different process from what would be necessary under the enlightened organisation of modern times.
No power but one of the peculiar kind which the Christian Church then possessed could have effected anything in this way. The Christian Church at this time, far from being in the outcast and outlawed state in which it existed in the time of the apostles, was now an organisation of great power, and of a kind of power peculiarly adapted to that rude and uncultured age. It laid hold of all those elements of fear, and mystery, and superstition, which are strongest in barbarous ages, as with barbarous individuals, and it visited the violations of its commands with penalties the more dreaded that they related to some awful future, dimly perceived and imperfectly comprehended.
In dealing with slavery, the Church did not commence with a proclamation of universal emancipation, because, such was the barbarous and unsettled nature of the times, so fierce the grasp of violence, and so many the causes of discord, that she avoided adding to the confusion by infusing into it this element; nay, a certain council of the Church forbade, on pain of ecclesiastical censure, those who preached that slaves ought immediately to leave their masters.
The course was commenced first by restricting the power of the master, and granting protection to the slave. The Council of Orleans, in 549, gave to a slave threatened with a broad leathern strap; he was punishment the privilege of taking sanctuary in a church, and forbade his master to withdraw him thence without taking a solemn oath that he would do him no harm; and if he violated the spirit of this oath, he was to be suspended from the Church and the sacraments — a doom which in those days was viewed with such a degree of superstitious awe that the most barbarous would scarcely dare to incur it. The custom was afterwards introduced of requiring an oath on such occasions, not only that the slave should be free from corporeal infliction, but that he should not be punished by an extra imposition of labour, or by any badge of disgrace. When this was complained of, as being altogether too great a concession on the side of the slave, the utmost that could be extorted from the Church, by way of retraction, was this — that in cases of very heinous offence the master should not be required to make the two latter promises.
There was a certain punishment among the Goths which was more dreaded than death. It was the shaving of the hair. This was considered as inflicting a lasting disgrace. If a Goth once had his hair shaved, it was all over with him. The fifteenth canon of the Council of Merida, in 666, forbade ecclesiastics to inflict this punishment upon their slaves, as also all other kind of violence; and ordained that, if a slave committed an offence, he should not be subject to private vengeance, but be delivered up to the secular tribunal, and that the bishops should use their power only to procure a moderation of the sentence. This was substituting public justice for personal vengeance — a most important step. The Church further enacted, by two councils, that the master who, of his own authority, should take the life of his slave, should be cut off for two years from the communion of the Church — a condition, in the view of those times, implying the most awful spiritual risk, separating the man in the eye of society from all that was sacred, and teaching him to regard himself, and others to regard him, as a being loaded with the weight of a most tremendous sin.
Besides the protection given to life and limb, the Church threw her shield over the family condition of the slave. By old Roman law, the slave could not contract a legal, inviolable marriage. The Church of that age availed itself of the Catholic idea of the sacramental nature of marriage to conflict with this heathenish doctrine. Pope Adrian I. said, “According to the words of the Apostle, as in Jesus Christ we ought not to deprive either slaves or freemen of the sacraments of the Church, so it is not allowed in any way to prevent the marriage of slaves; and if their marriages have been
contracted in spite of the opposition and repugnance of their masters, nevertheless they ought not to be dissolved.” St. Thomas was of the same opinion, for he openly maintains that, with respect to contracting marriage, “slaves are not obliged to obey their masters.”
It can easily be seen what an effect was produced when the personal safety and family ties of the slaves were thus proclaimed sacred by an authority which no man living dared dispute. It elevated the slave in the eyes of his master, and awoke hope and self-respect in his own bosom, and powerfully tended to fit him for the reception of that liberty to which the Church by many avenues was constantly seeking to conduct him.
Another means which the Church used to procure emancipation was a jealous care of the freedom of those already free.
Everyone knows how in our Southern States the boundaries of slavery are continually increasing, for want of some power there to perform the same kind office. The liberated slave, travelling without his papers, is continually in danger of being taken up, thrown into jail, and sold to pay his jail-fees. He has no bishop to help him out of his troubles. In no church can he take sanctuary. Hundreds and thousands of helpless men and women are every year engulfed in slavery in this manner.
The Church, at this time, took all enfranchised slaves under her particular protection. The act of enfranchisement was made a religious service, and was solemnly performed in the Church; and then the Church received the newly-made freeman to her protecting arms, and guarded his newly-acquired rights by her spiritual power. The first Council of Orange, held in 441, ordained in its seventh canon that the Church should check by ecclesiastical censures whoever desired to reduce to any kind of servitude slaves who had been emancipated within the inclosure of the Church. A century later, the same prohibition was repeated in the seventh canon of the fifth Council of Orleans, held in 549. The protection given by the Church to freed slaves was so manifest and known to all that the custom was introduced of especially recommending them to her, either in lifetime or by will. The Council of Agde, in Languedoc, passed a resolution commanding the Church, in all cases of necessity, to undertake the defence of those to whom their masters had, in a lawful way, given liberty.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 722
