Abstract

Richard Baxter (1615–1691) was a White English Puritan theologian. This chapter is a selection from his work A Christian Directory: Or, A Summ of Practical Divinity (1673), in which he criticizes transatlantic slavery in surprisingly direct ways in a chapter about the duties of masters toward their servants. Among other things, he provides specific advice to British Christians in foreign plantations who claim enslaved Black people as their property. What is particularly notable about Baxter’s discussion is the way in which it incorporates not just theological considerations but also ideas from the natural law tradition. These ideas include traditional justifications for war slavery and penal slavery as well as notions like natural equality and self-ownership. This text was very influential and was reprinted in the late eighteenth century as an abolitionist tract.