The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 · Chapter 19Another Pastoral Letter of Bishop Gibson of London
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To the Missionaries in the English Plantations (about 1727).
Having understood by many Letters from the Plantations, and by the Accounts of Persons who have come from thence, that very little progress hath hitherto been made in the conversion of the Negroes to the Christian Faith; I have thought it proper for me to lay before Masters and Mistresses the Obligations they are under, and to promote and encourage that pious and necessary Work….
As to those Ministers who have Negroes of their own; I cannot but esteem it their indispensable Duty to use their best Endeavors to instruct them in the Christian Religion, in order to their being baptised; both because such Negroes are their proper and immediate Care, and because it is in vain to hope that other Masters and Mistresses will exert themselves in this Work, if they see it wholly neglected, or but coldly pursued, in the Families of the Clergy …
I would also hope that the Schoolmasters in the several Parishes, part of whose Business it is to instruct Youth in the Principles of Christianity, might contribute somewhat towards the carrying on of this Work; by being ready to bestow upon it some of their Leisure Time, and especially on the Lord's Day, when both they and the Negroes are most at liberty and the Clergy are taken up with the public Duties of their Function.—Dalcho's An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, pages 112-114.