be attributed to a future time, which in the following chapter (the 28th) is expressly declared to have been in the fourth year of Zedekiah.
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Can any injury, except that of taking away a man's life, exceed that of taking away a man's liberty, who has never offended us! Can any robbery or injustice whatsoever be more atrocious than that of wearing out our poor brethren in a hard involuntary service, without wages or reward! thereby continually robbing them of the fruit of their labors! Have I not shown, by unquestionable examples from Scripture, that this is a crying sin, and that the Almighty hath denounced wo (Jer. xvii. 13,) against all such offenders? Do we not profess to serve the same God who so severely punished the Jews for this very crime ? And is there any just ground to hope, that God, who spared not his own peculiar people, will, nevertheless, excuse the inhabitants of Great Britain and her colonies, when they are wilfully guilty of the same offence!
The whole tenor of the Scriptures teaches us, that slavery was ever detestable in the sight of God, insomuch that it has generally been denounced (and, of course, inflicted) as the punishment of the most abandoned sinners; of which I have already given a great variety of instances.
And have not we just reason to dread the severe vengeance of Almighty God, when it is notorious, that the tyranny exercised in the British colonies is infinitely more unmerciful than than that which was formerly exercised by the Chaldeans, insomuch that the state of the Jews in their captivity might be esteemed rather as freedom than bondage, when compared with the deplorable servitude of the wretched negro slaves, as well as of the white servants, in our Colonies?
What must be the consequence of such abominable wickedness?
By as much as we exceed the Assyrians and Babylonians in religious knowledge, by so much more severely may we expect the hand of God upon us for our monstrous abuse of such advantages!
