Covenanters and Slavery - Part Three: 'To hold any of our fellow men in perpetual slavery is sinful.'
By Angela Wittman In the pamphlet Negro Slavery Unjustifiable Pastor McLeod went on to write of the "natural rights of man" and what this means from a Biblical viewpoint, which is very different from the antinomian view of Libertarians [emphasis in bold text is mine - AW]: I. To hold any of our fellow men in perpetual slavery is sinful. 1. This appears from the inconsistency of the practice of holding slaves with the natural rights of man , This is a term which has been much abused. It is proper that accurate ideas should be annexed to it, otherwise its force, in the present argument, will not be perceptible. If man were a being, owing his existence to accident, and not a creature of God, his rights would indeed be negative. If he stood in a state of independency of his Maker, and not a subject of law, his rights could be determined only by the will of society. But he is neither the son of chance nor the possessor of independency . His life and his faculties are the gift o