Matthew E. Roe compiled and edited a great set of sermons here to show what the Particular Baptists (that is Calvinists in England) thought about the slave trade.
Each sermon is preceded by a brief biographical sketch of the preacher which is super hand to help you understand where it’s coming from. Each sermon is also followed by contemporaneous reviews of those sermons so you get a feel for what the whole Particular Baptist movement and British Christians thought of these sermons.
Before we talk about these sermons, it is necessary to refresh our minds on how terrible the plight of the African slave was during this season of history.
These men, women, and children were stolen from their homes by various means. Some were wooed with promises of fun and safety, others were kidnapped by rival tribes, or even captured as part of war and sold off to the Europeans.
Many of the Africans, who have been enticed by the Europeans, and have come on board their vessels in confidence, have been detained and carried off. Others have been invited to a conference on the shore. A puncheon of spirits has been opened to entertain them, and as soon as they have drank to intoxication, they have been seized, and forced, in that helpless and unguarded situation, to the ships.
Clarksons’s Essay on Slavery as cited on page 140
Once captured, they would be shackled inhumanely to each other, arm and leg shackled to the next person so that any attempts at movement required perfect cooperation between the two captives. They would be moved onto a boat and held in spaces smaller than a coffin for the entirety of their several-month journey across the sea. The conditions were so improper that it was common for many captives to die along the journey. The sailors would have to check daily for dead bodies and toss them into the sea. It is reported that captives would also die if the storms go too bad and they took on water. since they had no freedom of movement they could not escape and fill their lungs with life-saving air.
Once they arrived at their destination, the humiliation continued. They would be inspected like cattle, naked and fondled to inspect their muscle strength and the hope that they would produce strong offspring. They were purchased without concern for their family and tribe that they had traveled with and known all their lives. It was not uncommon for a slave to arrive at their master’s home not knowing a soul there.
They are submitted to inspection by those who are in want of labourers for their farms, who do not fail to examine and treat them with an inhumanity at which even avarice ought to blush.
Clarksons’s Essay on Slavery as cited on page 144
A common day for a slave involved waking up at 4 am to do all the menial, backbreaking work of preparing the fields. Once sufficiently exhausted by those works, at 9 am, they would be allowed thirty minutes for breakfast which they were to eat in the fields, and then they’d be back to the plow until noon where they would switch gears to searching for hay for the animals. They’d be given an hour or two to collect enough to satisfy the slave masters and then present what they found. Slaves that did not return with enough hay would be whipped fifty stripes, which would cripple them for weeks. They would then have to go about finding food for the horses again and return to their masters at 7 pm for a final showing of what they had found. Failure would again be me with the whip.
And after all that, they could at most acquire, if they were lucky, eight hours of sleep.
Some, for trifling faults, are scourged with cart-whips, ebony brushes, and other instruments of cruelty, till they are incapable of lying down; and many die under their punishments. Others have their ears cut off, their noses slit, their arms and legs chopped off, at the caprice of their cruel masters; and when they are old, they are turned away to starve, or purposely driven to acts of violence, that their masters may be rewarded for taking away their lives.
John Liddon page 190
You’ll see in these pages their articulation of many theologically sound doctrines. You’ll see that we should hear the plight of the oppressed, speak up for them, and do whatever is in our power to do to lessen their burdens just as Scripture commands. You’ll see them condemn those that side idly by as those the Lord will brush off saying “I never knew you.” These abolitionists didn’t stop at just wanting the Africans freed, but argued further that they should be fairly compensated, something that to this day has never happened. And all of these arguments are grounded in Scripture and overflowing with a zeal for God that is frankly lacking in America.
Working together these abolitionists used petitions, pamphlets, the pulpit, and the press to stoke a fire and eventually overturn and the end of a 50 year long campaign.
The Sermons
There are five sermons in total:
1) Slavery Inconsistent with the Spirit of Christianity by Robert Robinson in 1788
The most striking thing for me in reading this first sermon was how each point he makes is echoed in our world today. Every point he brings up for why slavery should end is exactly the same points being made by those who argue for Biblical Justice and benevolence toward our fellow man. Inequality should never be the aim, goal, or accepted practice among Christians.
One point that really stood out to me what that Robert (and all these British Preachers) are arguing for the removal of a sinful practice that isn’t being done inside their borders.
“… and now pure and proper slavery is so effectually done away that a slave or Negro, the instant he lands in England, becomes a freeman…”
Robert Robinson page 46
A few years ago someone told me and my wife that speaking out against police injustice is something we shouldn’t do because all the police in our area are above reproach. I was baffled by the thought, because so often God called prophets in the Bible to preach against the sins in another land (ex Jonah). Here we see that these British Pastors found it their duty and obligation to speak out against the sins that were happening outside their immediate sphere of influence. And without them, it is likely that slavery would have continued.
2) A Sermon on the African Slave Trade by James Dore in 1788
In many ways, James Dore’s sermon and Robert Robinson’s sermons struck the same notes for me. But one thing James Dore did quite well was lay out how the Golden Rule says that we ought to stand up for our fellow man.
The royal law, the great leading maxim of the Gospel, requires you to do to others as you would have them do to you. Are you free? Are you willing to be deprived of your natural rights? Would you leave your native country, and submit to the lash of cruel taskmasters? Then why should that liberty be taken from others, of which you are justly tenacious?
James Dore page 89
3) Compassion the Duty and Dignity of Man by John Beatson in 1798
John Beatson delivers a death blow to the very idea that a Christian can sit by and rest safely in the knowledge that event will unfold as they may, “I had no part in it.” The Christian who sits idly by while evil is afoot is as guilty as the one committing the crime.
It was predicted that Jesus would be crucified, according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God; yet we are informed that by wicked hands he was taken… crucified and slain, and all those who took an active part in accomplishing those predictions are styled his betrayers and murderers. Shall we not, be the Judge of all the earth, be deemed the betrayers and murderers of thousands of inhabitants of Africa?
John Beatson citing Acts 2:23 & 7:52 on page 121
John Beatson ends his sermon with an impassioned plea for the people of God to act in the best interest of the Africans. It is the Christian duty to lay down your lives for the safety, security, and provision of those who have not yet come to Christ.
4) Commerce in the Human Species by Abraham Booth in 1792
Abraham Booth sets forth a direct attack on the idea that slavery is Biblical. He starts off his sermon by ingratiating himself to those who think it is biblical, but acknowledging that there are times and places were slavery may indeed be necessary. But then he attacks that idea throughout the rest of his sermon lavishingly using Scripture to point to each Biblical principle of slavery and showing how those requirements were not being met during Antebellum Slavery.
This sermon was a gold mine of Scripture references and the biblical context of how they should be applied contrasted against the failures of Europeans to live up to that standard.
5) Slavery Inconsistent with True Christianity by John Liddon in 1792
This was easily my most favorite of the five sermons. John Liddon has a way with words and Scripture that drives right at the heart of the matter. In the biography for Liddon, it says not much is known about it, and I am saddened by this as I would love to read more of his sermons. There is no chapter more full of highlights in my copy of this book than this one.
The slave trade is diametrically opposite to the Christian religion: for the Christian religion is founded in justice, it breathes nothing but compassion, and to produce the highest degree of moral excellence and human happiness is its professed end and direct tendency.
John Liddon page 192
John Liddon ignores the common arguments from both sides and dives straight into the heart of the matter. His arguments are clear and well reasoned from Scripture. Each of his points is as salient today as it was then. There is much to take to heart here as we consider rightly how we ought to act toward our fellow man.
Top Quotes
Normally, I break down the quotes with a little blurb from me to put them into context and provide meaning. But there are just too many quotable portions of this book. I leave the quotes as is.
John Liddon argues that: ‘Christianity is a system of compassion. […] No man is to be an indifferent spectator of the sufferings of his fellow man.’
Page 16
‘For most abolitionist Christians, ending the slave trade and evangelising non-Christians were complementary activities.’
John Coffey page 17
It is true we do not witness the various and complicated distresses of the poor Negroes: our midnight slumbers are not disturbed by heart-piercing groans; our public walks are not embittered by the sight of these miserable objects; but their wretchedness is not less real, because we see it not.
James Dore page 88
Consider the genius of your religion: a religion calculated to inspire universal benevolence, by teaching us that all mankind are our brethren; that they stand in the same common relation to God, the universal Parent, and are all equally designed for another state of existence. […] Is it probable that the poor Negroes will cordially embrace Christianity while they view it in such a horrid light in the lives of professed Christians? They cannot read our books, in which genuine Christianity is displayed, but they read the lives of any who assume the venerable Christian name. Action is a universal language, intelligible to all mankind. And how is Christianity disgraced by actions of those, in whom the practice of trading the persons of men has weakened the moral principle, and destroyed every human affection! What ideas must the Negroes form of that system of religion which they naturally suppose, tolerates barbarity?
James Dore page 90
If ever then you mean to spread the Gospel of peace, wipe this stain of infamy [slavery] from the Christian name.
John Beatson page 135
Abolish, then, so infamous, so destructive a commerce. No longer enslave an unoffending people. Inform the inhabitants of Africa that you have done them an injury, that you have violated the law of nations, and that you will no longer persist in such a procedure. Inform the unhappy slaves in the various islands, that the injury you have done them is irreparable, but that you are willing to make every compensation within your power: that you will put them under the protection of equal law, provide means of their instruction in the knowledge of Christianity, and raise them to the enjoyment of freedom, as soon as the circumstances of their case will admit. Thus will the blessing of him that was ready to perish come on you, and you will cause the heart, even of slaves, to sing for joy.
John Beatson citing Job 29:13 on page 135
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, is another of our Lord’s precepts. This admirably just and comprehensive command requires each of us to treat every man as we might reasonably wish every one to treat us, were the situations and circumstance reversed.
Abraham Booth citing Matthew 7:12 on page 171
It may perhaps be objected: personal slavery, though authorized by the laws of Greece and Rome, and though much practised in the Apostolic times, is nowhere expressly condemned in the New Testament; nay, Christians slaves are exhorted to live peaceable subjection to their own masters. To this it may be replied: nor was the sanguinary despotism of Nero expressly condemned, but the disciples of Christ were commanded to behave peaceably under his government.
Abraham booth page 175
Can it be wondered at that they meet death with joy? […] The greatest wonder is that they have submitted to their sufferings so long. Surely the patience of the Africans must far exceed that of the Europeans!
John Liddon page 191
Christianity is a system of compassion. It breathes nothing else.
John Liddon page 193
Superstition and bigotry might say, as they have said: “but they are not Christians.” It would be a wonder if they were. Of pure Christianity they are totally ignorant. And if they judge the Christian religion by the conduct of those who call themselves Christians, and who are their oppressors, they must suppose it to be of all others the worst religion, to justify such enormities.
John Liddon page 197
The doctrines, the precepts, the spirit of the Christian religion say, “Copy the example of the good Samaritan. Exert all your talents and all your influence to dry up the tears of the Africans, to meliorate the condition of those already enslaved, and to prevent the continuance of the abominable traffic.”
John Liddon page 199
To conclude. The abolition of this trade falls in with the whole genius of the Gospel. The prophets predict it, and it will be bought about by means. Let us be ambitions to be instruments of so good a work, and rest assured of the approbation of our master.
John Liddon page 205
Overall I give this book 5 stars. This book is packed with great theological insight, historical analysis, and astounding compassion. No Christian can read this book without being moved.
Up Next: The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
This Sporadic Life 