Page:Bible Defence of Slavery.djvu/173

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FORTUNES, OF THE NEGRO RACE.
159

therefore, abundant opportunity for the Jews to purchase children of the people of that cast for slaves, as Moses had told them in the law should be their privilege.

Having, as proposed in the commencement of this section, shown that the law of Moses did indorse and sanction the enslaving of the race of Ham, as denounced by Noah, and that the Hebrews, through the whole Jewish history, acted toward them on that principle, we pass to other matters respecting the race. One of those matters will consist of an inquiry, whether God created the race of Ham, equal with the descendants of the other sons of Noah, in point of native intellectuality, and especially, with those of Japheth, the white race.

From Noah's lips went forth the dire account,
Which echoed on the top of Sinai's mount
That God judicially decreed by name
The race of Ham for slaves — th' lambent flame,
Gave out a voice, all holy — not a flaw.
And there indorsed the same in Hebrew law.
Now let no erring man deride the stroke,
For judgment is God's strange and fearful work.
[Isaiah xxviii, 26.