An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery

Philadelphia: Perkins & Purves, 1846. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good. Publisher's midnight brown cloth stamped in gilt on spine, very good, previous owner's bookplate, lightest wear to binding, contents very good, slight toning and foxing and occasional pencil marks mainly in margins -- erasable -- and top outer corner of last quarter of book has coffee-colored stain. 384 pp, 12 pp. publisher's catalogue. Barnes was an American theologian, clergyman, abolitionist, temperance advocate, and author. Barnes is best known for his extensive Bible commentary and notes on the Old and New Testaments, published in a total of 14 volumes in the 1830s. Barnes was an abolitionist. In his book The Church and Slavery (1857), Barnes excoriates slavery as evil and immoral, and calls for it to be dealt with from the pulpit "as other sins and wrongs are" (most pointedly in chapter VII, "The Duty of the Church at Large on the Subject of Slavery"). In Frederick Douglass's famous 1852 oratory, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Barnes is quoted as saying: "There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it." Rare in the trade; at the time of this listing we found no other copies for sale.