THOMAS DOHERTY
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spot, but it also inflames the anger of owners unaccustomed to a possession
who can keep up his side of the conversation. Failing to best his newly
acquired slave in a debate on human equality, a British captain must resort to
threats of violence, hissing that Equiano "talked too much English:' In writ–
ing, this propensity for linguistic one-upmanship and smart-mouth prolixity
gets free rein. Quick-witted and fast-talking, Equiano leavens even slavery with
moments of humor. He is a master of the droll aside, the fish-out-of-water
incongruity, and the burlesque oflow comedy. In the case of the dying bequest
from an allegedly wealthy silversmith, he conjures an episode of extended
comic invention. A sure sign of a secure ego, he does not exempt his own fool–
ishness from satire as when, during the Phipps Expedition, he nearly blows
himself up (and the ship) while keeping a journal by candlelight near the gun–
powder stock.
If verbal dexterity and literary talent were defining qualities of that most
esteemed of contemporary models, the man of letters, literacy also makes
Equiano a man of God. Both as a profession of Christian conscience and evi–
dence of intimate acquaintance with the printed words of revelation, the Bible
informs his spiritual journey and buttresses his political purpose. For the
African agitator, the Good Book offers good shelter, a protected pulpit from
which to attack Anglo-American slavery. Coming from within the Christian
church and measured against biblical injunctions to brotherly love, the rhetoric
against slavery was tactically crafty and devastatingly effective. He taunts the in–
name-only believers as "ye nominal Christians" and "tender Christian
depredators." A local law in Barbados absolving white men for murdering
Negroes is an act "which would disgrace an assembly of those who are called
barbarians; and for its injustice and insanity would shock the morality and
common sense of a Samaide or Hottentot." With undisguised satisfaction, he
tosses out the worst insult: "those who in general termed themselves
Christians, [are] not so honest nor so good in their morals as the Turks:'
To see Equiano's spiritual regeneration as a purely rhetorical strategy,
however, would be to misread the temper of the man and his times. Religion
is an animating vision of life, not a dull habit born of convention or a pose for
reformist convenience. Perhaps understandably for a man buffeted by
deus ex
machina
all his life, Equiano came to embrace the stern predestinarianism of
John Calvin. With the best thinkers of his age, he wrestled with the harsh para–
dox at the core of hardcore Protestantism, the theological conundrum
embodied in Calvin's notion of the "covenant of grace." If God's grace is
unconditional and bestowed upon an elect few in a predetermined judg–
ment, then man has no role in his own fate, no true choice in his salvation or
damnation, no free
will.
The decision to perform good works, the outward
evidence of sanctification on earth, may mean nothing to heaven. How then
can man know he is saved? For Equiano, a Damascus moment of revelation
