People who have “forfeited life or liberty” can be enslaved, Baxter wrote. However, “to go as pirates and catch up poor negroes… is one of the worst kind of thievery in the world.” Enslavers “that buy them and use them as beasts and… neglect their souls, are fitter to be called incarnate devils than Christians.” Baxter naïvely believed there existed in bulk in the slave trade what he called a “voluntary-slave.” He tried to will into existence a world where loving masters bought voluntary slaves to save their souls.
Makes me think of modern dialog related to choice of poverty and crime
