4. "Although this society has been always most honourably
distinguished by the gentleness with which the negroes belonging to
its trust estates have been generally treated, yet even these (by the
confession of our missionaries) are in too abject, and depressed, and
uncivilized a state to be proper subjects for the reception of the
divine truths of revelation. They stand in need of some further marks
of the society's regard and tenderness for them, to conciliate their
affections, to invigorate their minds, to encourage their hopes,
and to rouse them out of that state of languor and indolence and
insensibility, which renders them indifferent and careless both about
this world and the next.
5. "A still further obstacle to the effectual conversion of the
Negroes has been the almost unrestrained licentiousness of their
manner, the habits of vice and dissoluteness in which they are
permitted to live, and the sad examples they too frequently see in
their managers and overseers. It can never be expected that people
given up to such practices as these, can be much disposed to receive a
pure and undefiled religion: or that, if after their conversion they
are allowed, as they generally are, to retain their former habits,
their christianity can be anything more than a mere name.
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