Nor is it correct to represent ecclesiastical influences as the sole agency which overthrew slavery and serfdom.

The desire of the kings to raise up the chartered cities as a bridle to the barons, was that which chiefly made rustic slavery untenable in its coarsest form; for a "villain" who escaped into the free cities could not be recovered.

In later times, the first public act against slavery came from republican France, in the madness of atheistic enthusiasm; when she declared black and white men to be equally free, and liberated the negroes of St.Domingo.In Britain, the battle of social freedom has been fought chiefly by that religious sect which rests least on the letter of Scripture.

The bishops, and the more learned clergy, have consistently been apathetic to the duty of overthrowing the slave system .-- I was thus led to see, that here also the New Testament precepts must not be received by me as any final and authoritative law of morality.

But I meet opposition in a quarter from which I had least expected it;--from one who admits the imperfection of the morality actually attained by the apostles, but avows that Christianity, as a divine system, is not to be identified with apostolic doctrine, but with the doctrine _ultimately developed_ in the Christian Church; moreover, the ecclesiastical doctrine concerning slavery he alleges to be truer than mine,--I mean, truer than that which I have expounded as held by modern abolitionists.