Читать книгу Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730–1805 - Группа авторов - Страница 54

An Appeal to the Public (1773) is prefaced with an essay on political theory that shows charter rights and divine or supernatural rights to be fundamental to Backus’s argument at this stage of his thinking. Natural rights of a Lockean kind he had not yet reconciled with his view of human depravity derived from John Calvin. The body of the piece explores in some detail the problems of church–state relations that so vitally interested Backus and the Baptists. Backus’s most famous work is his “Baptist History,” or A History of New-England with Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians Known as Baptists (3 vols.: Boston, 1777–96; 2-vol. rev. ed.: David Weston, 1871).