1st. Every member of our society who has slaves in his possession shall, within twelve months after notice given him by the assistant (which notice the assistants are required immediately, and without any delay, to give in their respective circuits), legally execute and record an instrument, whereby he emancipates and sets free every slave in his possession who is between the ages of forty and forty-five immediately, or at furthest when they arrive at the age of forty-five.
And every slave who is between the ages of twenty-five and forty immediately, or at furthest at the expiration of five years from the date of the said instrument.
And every slave who is between the ages of twenty and twenty-five immediately, or at furthest when they arrive at the age of thirty.
And every slave under the age of twenty, as soon as they arrive at the age of twenty-five at furthest.
And every infant born in slavery after the above mentioned rules are complied with, immediately on its birth.
2d. Every assistant shall keep a journal, in which he shall regularly minute down the names and ages of all the slaves belonging to all the masters in his respective circuit, and also the date of every instrument executed and recorded for the manumission of the slaves, with the name of the court, book, and folio, in which said instrument respectively shall have been recorded; which journal shall be handed down in each circuit to the succeeding assistants.
3d. In consideration that these rules form a new term of communion, every person concerned who will not comply with them, shall have liberty quietly to withdraw himself from our society within the twelve months succeeding the notice given as aforesaid; otherwise the assistants shall exclude him from the society.
4th. No person holding slaves shall in future be admitted into society or the Lord's Supper, till he previously complies with these rules concerning slavery.
N. B. These rules are to affect the members of our society no further than as they are consistent with the laws of the States in which they reside.
Question 43. What shall be done with those who buy sell slaves, or give them away? Ans. They are immediately to be expelled; unless they buy them on purpose to free them."
1. It will be seen, by the above, that our preachers, in 1784, viewed the holding of slaves, or the sustaining voluntarily the relation of master and slave, as contrary to the golden law of God. Hence, not only official members, but private members, were to break that relation by manumission according to the conditions laid down.
2. They regarded slavery in America the most abject of any perhaps in the known world.
3. They considered that holding a fellow-creature in bondage was a sin sufficient to exclude any one from the Supper of the Lord, and was an abomination which they sought to extirpate from the church. These fathers then were a band of Christian abolitionists, and contended for emancipation. For "extirpation" means, according to Webster, to "destroy, to pull up by the roots;" which is all we mean by abolition.
4. We have painfully to admit that the church did afterward fall from her noble and New Testament position on the subject of slavery; and many of these fathers tried to undo with their own hands what they had so nobly accomplished. So that in 1808 was stricken out of the Discipline all that related to private members; and slaveholding was only considered an official impediment. Private members could hold for life their fellow-creatures in bondage, give them away to their children during their lifetime, and leave them in perpetual slavery. So the whole ground was in effect conceded to slavery. What a fearful history the M. E. Church has read to the world by this concession — a history written with the blood and tears of oppressed thousands! Private members holding slaves, soon involved class-leaders, exhorters, local preachers, and travelling preachers, and finally debauched the moral sentiments of the whole church, so that in 1836 the General Conference was in direct antagonism to the Conference of 1784. The year 1836 was the darkest hour in the history of the M. E. Church. Rum and slavery were both triumphant in her at this time. At that period private members could manufacture and sell rum, but an ordained elder could not. The church has seen the folly of such a distinction, and has since decreed that rumselling for gain is sin in any man; and she will arrive at the same conclusion with regard to slavery.
Had it not been for New England and Western Methodism, in 1844, we should have had some slaveholding bishops to preside over our conferences at this time. I thank my Divine Master for New England Methodism!
What was the final result of the concession of 1808? The organization and development of the M. E. Church South; whose only peculiar and distinctive feature is that she upholds, defends, and sustains her entire membership, including travelling preachers and bishops, in holding, buying, selling, and giving away slaves, as goods personal, to all intents and purposes. She defends slavery as a good, and appeals to the religion of Christ to sustain it. She can take but one other step; and that is, to recommend the reopening of the slave trade on the coast of Africa, which is certainly no worse than the internal slave-trade. And all these consequences flow necessarily from the premise that private members are not sinners by holding, breeding and working, giving away, or willing human beings as things and chattels. Once grant this in church or state, and all other things will be added, including the slave-trade. They are all parts of one great whole. While we detest the principles of the M. E. Church South on the subject of slavery, we admire her honesty in avowing that slavery is not a sin in private members or bishops; and the only holy and logical weapons by which we can subdue her is to affirm that slavery is sin by whomsoever committed, be he saint or sinner, layman or bishop. To this point the Discipline of the M. E. Church will come, as it ought to have come in 1856, at the General Conference at Indianapolis.
We lament that this talented and venerable body of Christian ministers and divines should have hesitated a moment to declare that slaveholding is a sin in the laity as well as in the ministry. It is true that the members of the General Conference of 1856 took higher ground against slavery, in their speeches at the Conference, than has been taken since 1784; and much progress has been made in the right direction. Nevertheless, we occupy an anomalous position. While three-fourths of the ministry and laity are decidedly antislavery, we have a pro-slavery Discipline, which allows our private members in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia to hold for gain, to give away, and transmit by will to their heirs, as chattels personal, souls for whom Christ died. The slave can be sold for their debts at any time. They can give them away to relatives, who can sell them to the negro buyer at pleasure; and do all this according to the Discipline of the church; and they cannot be expelled for it. At one small country appointment, in the fall of '55 and winter of '56, I knew two members of the M. E. Church who died, and left from twenty-five to thirty slaves in bondage for life; thereby depriving these poor creatures of rights natural and divine. Slaveholding and slave-breeding can never be broken up in the church by merely keeping it out of the ministry. Suppose we were to send missionaries to Utah to convert the Mormons, and they were to profess to be converted and offer to join the M. E. Church, but request to retain polygamy, and the preachers were to say that they might do it, but were determined to keep it out of the ministry: would we ever break up polygamy among the Mormons? Never! never! For my part, I believe it just as much a sin in a private member to deprive a fellow-creature of his just wages, to separate him like a brute from friends, as it would be in a bishop. The antislavery principles of our holy religion, and the M. E. Church South, will drive us, on the Border, from this untenable ground. Let us get on the rock of eternal truth and righteousness, and then we shall have the sympathy of the good of all nations. And what is still better, we shall have the sympathy of the man Christ Jesus, who was sold like a slave for thirty pieces of silver. I believe that the blessed Jesus is an antislavery Redeemer. When he forgave me my sins, he whispered to my inmost soul that the holding of slaves was sin.
THE TESTIMONY.
I consider American slavery to be the great question now before the American people in church and state. Its importance surpasses the political separation from Great Britain, which agitated the minds of our fathers from 1770 to 1776. I believe that