The resolutions on the church to which the Massachusetts Society gave its assent at its annual meeting, were from Mr. Garrison's hand. They contained no doctrine that was not published by him at the very inception of his anti-slavery labors; but they may be quoted as a type of formal anti-slavery utterance on this subject during the year—and as a progressive example of the grounds of clerical hostility to their author:
Resolved, That no man who apologizes for slavery, or1 refuses to bear an open and faithful pulpit testimony against it, or who neglects to exert his moral and official influence in favor of the cause of human freedom and of the rights of his enslaved fellow-men, can have the least claim to be regarded as a minister of Him who came to preach deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; and that for abolitionists to recognize such men as ministers of Christ, or to aid in supporting them as such, is as inconsistent with their principles, and must be as displeasing to God, as it would be for them to support in that capacity a slaveholder, or an open defender of slavery. Resolved, That no association of men can have any just claim to be considered a Church of Jesus Christ which withholds its sympathy and aid from the oppressed, or which either refuses or neglects to bear its testimony against the awful sin of slavery; and that abolitionists are bound by the holy principles they profess, and by their regard for the rights of their enslaved and imbruted fellow-men, to withhold their support from such associations, and to endeavor to bring the members of them to repentance for the sin of stopping their ears at the cry of the poor.
