William A. Smith, DD. President of Randolph-Macon College , and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy., Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery as exhibited in the Institution of Domestic Slavery in the United States: withe Duties of Masters to Slaves.

[271] that is, to abandon those rights of conscience which are guaranteed to every citizen by the constitution of our country? Already, many of these schools are thus controlled, and a large portion of the citizens are thus being educated in the city and State of New York, and other places 1 But nothing of this sort can exist to any extent in the Southern States. So far as popular education is promoted in these States, it must be strictly Protestant education — Protestant, at least, in its main feature: that is, every citizen brought up among us grows up in the educated belief that, whatever aid he may seek or derive from a gospel ministry, he is still individually and personally responsible to God and his country, for his opinions and his practices, both as to politics and religion. He should, therefore, read, reflect, and judge for himself. No “man of sin,” in the shape of pope, bishop, priest, minister, or preacher of the gospel, or with any other title, has authority to “oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped,” by dispensing either political or religious beliefs; “so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God:” enforcing his right to control the consciences of men, by severe spiritual and temporal penalties — reaching even to “anathema maranatha!” No material portion of Southern