Colonial Pastors in Public Affairs - Rev. John Wise P4

I have been talking about the Rev. John Wise, his powerful sermons with ideas that helped influence American thinking leading to the War of Independence and I started giving you a list of leading patriots from Massachusetts who reprinted two of Wise’s works to remind their fellow citizens of the core Biblical principles of government. Continuing that list:

. Educators Tapping Reeve (founder of the first law school in America), Eleazer Wheelock (founder of Dartmouth), Samuel Stallman and Isaac Backus (founders of Brown University), and Jeremy Belknap (noted historian)

. Noted patriots William Dawes (who rode with Paul Revere as part of that famous “midnight ride”), Samuel Gore (one of the “Indians” in the Boston Tea Party), and Ebenezer Dorr

These American luminaries helped publish Wise’s works so his ideas could be distributed among the people by the Sons of Liberty and other leading patriots. The first printing sold so quickly that a second was issued. Historians in later generations noted:

Some of the most glittering sentences in the immortal Declaration of Independence are almost literal quotations from this essay of John Wise….It was used as a political textbook in the great struggle for freedom. 

Content Sourced from The American Story, The Beginnings by Dave Barton & Tim Barton