Albert Barnes

1798-1870. Presbyterian minister and commentator. Born in Rome, New York, of Methodist background, he was educated at Hamilton College and Princeton Seminary and became a Presbyterian pastor first at Morristown, New Jersey, then at First Church in Philadelphia. He was a dynamic evangelical preacher who sought to challenge the human will to respond to God's free offer of salvation. He became a leader of the New School revivalist party and was considered a dangerous radical by the strictly Calvinistic Old School party. In 1830 he was charged with doctrinal error by his presbytery, acquitted by the general assembly, but admonished about the objectionable passages in a sermon, “The Way of Salvation.” He argued in his book An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery (1846) that the Bible and common sense alike condemned slavery. His Notes on the NT, Psalms, and Isaiah were read widely.