These unhappy Wretches learn in their Native Country, the grossest
Idolatry, and the most savage Dispositions: and then are sold to the
best Purchaser: sometimes by their Enemies, who would else put them
to Death; sometimes by the nearest Friends, who are either unable or
unwilling to maintain them. Their Condition in our Colonies, though it
cannot well be worse than it would have been at Home, is yet nearly as
hard as possible: their Servitude most laborious, their Punishments
most severe. And thus many thousands of them spend their whole
Days, one Generation after another, undergoing with reluctant Minds
continual Toil in this World, and comforted with no Hopes of Reward
in a better. For it is not to be expected that Masters, too commonly
negligent of Christianity themselves, will take much Pains to teach it
their slaves; whom even the better Part of them are in a great Measure
habituated to consider, as they do their Cattle, merely with a view
to the Profit arising from them. Not a few, therefore, have openly
opposed their Instruction, from an Imagination now indeed proved and
acknowledged to be groundless, that Baptism would entitle them to
Freedom.
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