Discussions (Vol 2) by Robert L. Dabney (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'The Southern Church and the Presbyterian Alliance'.
My summary
Today Dabney continues giving us his thoughts on the Presbyterian alliance.
Dabney says: 'Now, what I affirm is that this majority erred; that the next Assembly ought to retrace the fatal misstep, and that the church ought to speak so as to put necessary nerve into the commissioners of the next Assembly to ensure their doing so.'
He then asserts:
(i) that the majority sacrificed their friends to their recent enemies and slanderers;
(ii) their action involves an insult to these new allies;
(iii) the majority did wrong by this ad hominem argument;
(iv) the action forfeits a happy opportunity to assert the good name of his afflicted church;
(v) the action is unjust to our honoured commissioners in the first council;
(vi) the present attitude of the assembly is wrong;
(vii) that the charge under which his church has been lying is not one about which men can honestly 'agree to differ';
(viii) the church will be apprehended in all future history as having virtually fallen from its testimony.
What grabbed me
More frightful comments from Dabney about slavery: 'If those churches were correct in formally charging me with "men-stealing," etc., and I am still unrepentant and unreformed, then they ought not to admit me to their communion. But I have declared that I am not repentant. The forcible confiscation of my property by others does not change my guilt. Were I left to myself, I should doubtless be holding my servants to-day (and a blessed thing it would be for them if I were). If this charge is not just, then it is a slander inflicted on me under the most formal and aggravated circumstances ; and I cannot surrender my own vindication without treason to my good name and the credit of Christ's people among whom I am numbered. The issue is inexorable. The obligation of charity does indeed require me to forbear retaliation and revenge, and to render "good for their evil ;" but to make it a pretext for betraying truth and righteousness merely because I happen to be one of the persons in whom they are assailed, is worse than confused logic ; it is moral obliquity.'
Someone seems to have vested interests in defending slavery...
Next week's reading
Commence 'The dancing question' by reading up to the paragraph beginning '5. The Scripture has virtually included the modern dance in an express prohibition in three places...'
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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