tion being secure, love him as a son, and as a brother, for the sake of the communion of faith." (37.)

From these, I pass on to a number of Councils, extending from A.D. 341, to the seventh century:

COUNCIL OF GANgra, a.d. 341.

"If any one, under pretext of religion, shall teach a slave to despise his own master, that he should depart from his service, and no longer submit to him with benevolence and honor, let him be accursed. ' (anathema.) (38.)

COUNCIL OF AGde, a.d. 506.

"If the bishop shall have granted liberty to any slaves belonging to the Church, who have been well-deserving in his judgment, let the liberty thus granted be preserved to them by his successors, with whatever property their manumittor bestowed." (39.)

COUNCIL OF ORLEANS, A.D 511.

"The slave who has taken refuge in the Church for any transgression, if he has received the sacrament after the admission of his fault, shall be compelled to return immediately to the service of his master." (40.)

COUNCIL OF EPONE, A.D. 517.

"If any one shall kill his own slave without judicial authority, he shall expiate the effusion of blood by excommunication during two years." (41.)

COUNCIL OF ORLEANS, A.D. 541.

"It shall not be allowed to the slaves of the Church or of the priests, to take spoils or captives, for it is unjust that while their masters are sustaining the benefit of redemption, the discipline of the Church should be stained by the excesses of the slaves." (42.)

COUNCIL OF ORLeans, a.d. 549.

"No bishop shall presume to ordain any slave who has not re ceived liberty from his own master, nor even one who is already free, without the consent of him to whom he is either a slave, or who is known to have enfranchised him." (43.)

COUNCIL OF MAGON, A.D. 581.

"Therefore, in this present Council, God being the author, we decree that no Christian from henceforth shall serve a Jew, but that

any Christian may have license to redeem him, either for freedom or for slavery, twelve shillings being given for a good slave.

For it is an impiety that those, whom Christ our Lord has redeemed with the shedding of His blood, should remain bound with the chains of his persecutors. And if any Jew be unwilling to consent to our decree, it shall be lawful for the slave to dwell with Christians, wherever he chooses, so long as his Jewish master delays to come for his money." (44.)

COUNCIL OF TOLEDO, A.D. 589.

แ Since we are informed that in many cities the slaves of the churches, and of the bishops, or of all the clergy, are wearied out with various vexatious burdens by the judges or the public functionaries, this whole Council asks of the piety of our lord (the king) that he will prohibit such presumptuous doings from henceforth: so that the slaves of the aforesaid officers shall labor for their use, or for the Church." (45.)

COUNCIL OF NARBONNE, A.D. 589.

"Every man, whether free or bound, Goth, Roman, Syrian, Greek, or Jew, shall abstain from work on the Lord's day, neither shall he yoke the oxen, except necessity compels in harvest. And if any presume to act contrary, if he be a free man, he shall pay six shillings, as a fine to the treasurer of the city, and if he be a slave he shall receive one hundred stripes." (46.)

COUNCIL OF BERGHAMSTEAD, A.D. 697.

"If any one shall manumit his slave at the altar, let him be free, and capable to enjoy heirship and weregild, and it shall be lawful for him to go wherever he will, without restraint." (47.)

COUNCIL OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, A.D. 816.

"On account of the sin of the first man, the punishment of servitude was divinely appointed to the human race: so that to those whom He (the Almighty) saw to be unfit for freedom, he mercifully ordained slavery. And although original sin is remitted to all the faithful by the grace of baptism, nevertheless God, in equity, distributed life to men, constituting some slaves, and others masters, in order that the license of evil-doing by the slaves might be restrained by the power of their lords. There is no accepting of persons with God. For our only Lord sets forth His ordinance equally to the

masters and to the slaves. Better is a subject servitude than a proud liberty. For many are found freely serving God under flagitious masters, who, although they are subject to them in body, are far above them in mind." (48.)

The next extract is from the capitulary of the Emperor Louis, which, though not in the usual form of a Council, is of equal authority as bearing testimony to the doctrine and practice of the Church. Concerning the ordination of slaves who are everywhere promoted to the ecclesiastical degrees with indiscretion, it is agreed by all that regard should be had to the sacred canons; and it is therefore decreed that henceforth none of the bishops shall presume to advance them to Holy Orders, unless they have first received their freedom from their own masters. And if any slave is a fugitive from his master, or lies hid, or brings forward witnesses influenced by a gift or corrupted, or receives the ecclesiastical degrees by any fraud or knavery, it is decreed that he shall be deposed, and his master shall again receive him." (49.)

COUNCIL OF WORMS, A.D. 868.

"If any one shall kill his slave, whatever he may have committed worthy of death, without the knowledge of the judges, he shall cleanse away the guilt of blood by a penance of two years, or by excommunication." (50)

The same Council enacted another canon, with which I shall close this portion of the evidence:

"If any slave, during the absence, or without the knowledge of his master, the bishop being aware that he was a slave, shall be ordained a deacon or a presbyter, let him remain in the office of the clergy, but the bishop shall pay to the master a double price. But if the bishop did not know that he was a slave, those persons who gave their testimony concerning him, or demanded that he should be ordained, shall be held liable to pay the same recompense." (51)

This may be the best place, however, for the consideration of another Council, held at London, A.D. 1011, in which the selling of Eng. lishmen appears to have been forbidden, in the following words:

"Let no one by any means presume, henceforward, to engage in that nefarious traffic, by which, hitherto, men have been accustomed to be sold, like brute beasts, in England." (52)

The distinguished Bishop of Oxford, son of the celebrated Mr

Wilberforce, wrote, when a presbyter, an able and interesting History of the American Church, in which, toward the end, his sympathies with abolitionism are stated very strongly, as might be naturally expected. And he quotes the supposed canon above mentioned, saying, that "this must be the Church's rule, on the banks of the Mississippi, as it was on those of the Thames." From his book, some of our American Churchmen have taken this Council of London as an authority of great importance; and as I was not a little surprised to find an English council of that age contradicting so strongly the whole course of ecclesiastical legislation on this subject, throughout the rest of Christendom, I took the pains to look into the real state of the matter, and discovered that the statement was founded upon a mistake.

It is true that such a council was holden, under Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the canon, as quoted, appears as if it were a part of its doings. But on the following page, we have a letter from the Archbishop himself, which deprives it of all its supposed authority. This letter I shall proceed to set before you:

Anselm, Archbishop, to William, his beloved Archdeacon, health and benediction:"

"I am not willing to send to you, or to any one, at present, the resolutions of the chapters of the Council as set forth; because, although they were brought before the Council, they could not be fully and perfectly stated, by reason of their being proposed suddenly, without the premeditation and competent examination which were meet. Hence, it appears that some things are to be added, and perhaps some things must be changed, which I am not willing to do, unless by the common consent of our episcopal colleagues. I intend therefore to suggest and show those matters to those bishops, when we next come together, before the acts set forth are sent to the churches of England. The titles, nevertheless, of the matters, concerning which we there conferred, we send to you; that according to what you may be able to remember, you may consider us to have decreed concerning these." Then the Archbishop sets down a list of subjects, in which nothing whatever is said about the selling of slaves, so that this topic is entirely omitted from the real deliberations of the Council. (53)

This positive statement from Anselm, who was the official head or president, must be conclusive to prove that there was no definitive

action on the subject, but only what we should call a proposition, recorded by the secretary, without any discussion, or any vote, and therefore not in any sense the act of the Council. The matter does not appear again, in any form. And hence this supposed decree of the Council of London really amounts to nothing.

And yet, even if this imaginary canon had been actually passed, it would only prove that "the nefarious business of selling men like brute beasts," was to be done away; and therefore it might have been intended to abolish the public slave-market, without affecting the institution of Villenage, which we know, from history, continued to exist in England for several centuries after this time. This you will perceive at once, on consulting the original Latin, because the words slave, slavery, or any term equivalent to them, is not to be found there. We shall see, in the progress of my work, that there was no change on this subject in the thirteenth century; for, if there had been, it is impossible that the lawyers and the historians, whom I shall quote by and by, should have failed to notice it.

Setting aside, then, this supposed action of the Council of London, we have the testimony of the other parts of the Church throughout the world, clear and unanimous, in support of the doctrine of the fathers. Beginning with the Apostolic Canons, and the Clementine Constitutions, which governed the East, we have the Council of Gangra, in Asia Minor, the Councils of Agde, Narbonne, and Orleans, in France; the Council of Epone or Epanum, and Maçon, in Burgundy; the Council of Toledo, in Spain; the Council of Berghamstead, near Canterbury, in England; the Councils of Aix-la-Chapelle and Worms in Germany-all distinctly proving the institution as it was acknowledged by the Church for the first nine hundred years of the Christian era, providing for the return of fugitive slaves to their masters, repeating the duty of the slave to be faithful to his lord, and the duty of the master to be kind to the servant, while not one suggestion can be found imputing sin to the relation between the master and the slave, nor regarding it as a matter that ought to be abolished, nor treating it as inconsistent, in the slightest degree, with the purest principles of Christian piety. Nor is this the whole. For these councils further prove that slaves belonged to the churches, the monasteries, the bishops, and the clergy, during all these ages. So that thus far, no fact of ecclesiastical history admits of a fuller and more decisive demonstration. Yet I shall give you still more evidence, so that you shall say, satis, superque.