Samuel Hopkins Quotes
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These Scriptures, therefore, are infinitely far from justifying the slavery under consideration; for it cannot be made to appear that one in a thousand of these slaves has done any thing to forfeit his own liberty.
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However, I am willing to hear what you can produce from Scripture in favor of any kind of slavery.
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Willingness to be damned for the glory of God.
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In a word, if any kind of slavery can be vindicated by the Holy Scriptures, we are already sure our making and holding the Negroes our slaves, as we do, cannot be vindicated by any thing we can find there, but is condemned by the whole of divine revelation.
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If the slavery in which we hold the blacks is wrong, it is a very great and public sin, and, therefore, a sin which God is now testifying against in the calamities he has brought upon us; consequently, must be reformed before we can reasonably expect deliverance, or even sincerely to ask for it.
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If it be not a sin, an open, flagrant violation of all the rules of justice and humanity, to hold these slaves in bondage, it is indeed folly to put ourselves to any trouble and expense in order to free them.
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Furthermore, the slaves cannot be put into a more wretched situation, ourselves being judges, and the community cannot take a more lively step to escape ruin, and obtain the smiles and protection of Heaven.
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God saw fit, for wise reasons to allow the people of Israel thus to make and possess slaves; but is this any license to us to enslave any of our fellow-men, to kill any of our fellow-men whom we please and are able to destroy, and take possession of their estates?
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It was right for them to make bond-servants of the nations round them, they having an express permission to do it from him who has a right to dispose of all men as he pleases.
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Let this iniquity be viewed in its true magnitude, and in the shocking light in which it has been set in this conversation; let the wretched case of the poor blacks be considered with proper pity and benevolence, together with the probably dreadful consequence to this land of retaining them in bondage, and all objection against liberating them would vanish.
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This is acting like the mariner, who, when his ship is filling with water, neglects to stop the leak, or ply the pump, that he may mend his sails.
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If we obstinately refuse to reform what we have implicitly declared to be wrong, and engaged to put away the holding of the Africans in slavery... have we not the great reason to fear, yea, may we not with great certainty conclude, God will withdraw his kind protection from us, and punish us yet seven times more?
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And if there were any such, they have never been condemned to slavery by any who are proper judges, or had any authority to act in the affair.
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This institution of Heaven, when properly attended to, understood, and cordially embraced, turns men from darkness to marvelous light. If it finds them in a state of savage ignorance and barbarity it civilizes them, and forms them to be intelligent and good members of society.