It probably has not occurred to you, how fairly and fully you might have been stopped, upon the very threshold of your defence of slavery.  The only witness you have called to the stand to sustain your sinking cause, is the Bible.  But this is a witness, which slavery has itself impeached, and of which, therefore, it is not entitled to avail itself.  It is a good rule in our civil courts, that a party is not permitted to impeach his own witness; and it is but an inconsiderable variation of the letter of this rule, and obviously no violation of its spirit and policy to say, that no party is permitted to attempt to benefit his cause by a witness whom he has himself impeached.  Now, the slaveholder palpably violates this rule, when he presumes to offer the Bible as a witness for his cause:—­for he has previously impeached it, by declaring, in his slave system, that it is not to be believed—­that its requirements are not to be obeyed—­that they are not even to be read (though the Bible expressly directs that they shall be)—­that concubinage shall be substituted for the marriage it enjoins—­and that its other provisions for the happiness, and even the existence, of the social relations, shall be trampled under foot.  The scene, in which a lawyer should ask the jury to believe what his witness is saying at one moment, and to reject what he is saying at another, would be ludicrous enough.  But what more absurdity is there in it than that which the pro-slavery party are guilty of, when they would have us deaf, whilst their witness is testifying in favor of marriage and searching the Scriptures; and, all ears, whilst that same witness is testifying, as they construe it, in favor of slavery!  No—­before it will be competent for the American slaveholder to appeal to the Bible for justification of his system, that system must be so modified, as no longer to make open, shameless war upon the Bible.  I would recommend to slaveholders, that, rather than make so unhallowed a use of the Bible as to attempt to bolster up their hard beset cause with it, they should take the ground, which a very distinguished slaveholding gentleman of the city of Washington took, in a conversation with myself on the subject of slavery.  Feeling himself uncomfortably plied by quotations from the word of God, he said with much emphasis, “Stop, Sir, with that, if you please—­SLAVERY IS A SUBJECT, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BIBLE.”

This practice of attempting to put the boldest and most flagrant sins under the wing and sanction of the Bible, is chargeable on others as well as on the advocates of slavery.  Not to speak of other instances of it—­it is sought to justify by this blessed book the most despotic forms of civil government, and the drinking of intoxicating liquors.  There are two evils so great, which arise from this perversion of the word of God, that I cannot forbear to notice them.  One is, that the consciences of men are quieted, when they imagine that they have found a justification