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“In one of these two sermons, John Wise, and I quote, says, ‘All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.’ That’s in the Declaration,” Barton explained.
That statement appeared decades before the Continental Congress approved the Declaration in 1776.
But the similarities do not stop there.
Wise also preached that legitimate governments derive authority from the people themselves, not from kings or political elites. He argued against taxation without representation long before the American colonies openly rebelled against Britain.
Those themes became the backbone of the Declaration of Independence.
Barton noted that the sermons were later reprinted by Boston’s Sons of Liberty in 1772, just years before the Revolutionary War exploded into open conflict.
“They decided that if we were going to get everybody on the same page, there was this pastor years ago who preached these great sermons. We should reprint those sermons and have them so Americans can reach them because that would help them understand what we’re thinking and where we’re coming from,” Barton said.
That detail matters for one enormous reason.
The Sons of Liberty was not some fringe activist club.
The organization included future Declaration signers like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two men deeply involved in the independence movement.
Hancock famously served as president of the Continental Congress, while Adams’ cousin, John Adams, sat on the committee that worked with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to draft the Declaration.
Historic records from Ipswich reveal just how revolutionary Wise’s sermons were for their time.
According to Historic Ipswich, Wise declared around 1700:
“The first human subject and original of civil power is the people… and when they are free, they may set up what species of government they please. The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all, and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, etc., without injury or abuse done to any.”
That language closely mirrors Jefferson’s own early draft of the Declaration, which stated:
“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Critics on the Left have long insisted America’s founding was purely secular.
But Jefferson himself appeared to reject the idea that the Declaration emerged from some brand-new Enlightenment breakthrough disconnected from religion or prior thought.
Shortly before his death in 1826, Jefferson explained that the Declaration was never intended to introduce original concepts.
“not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject.”
He continued:
“Terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independant stand we… compelled to take, neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”
Jefferson even acknowledged the Declaration reflected ideas circulating throughout society in conversations, essays, letters, and influential writings from thinkers across history.
That admission lends serious credibility to the argument that Christian sermons like Wise’s may have helped shape the political philosophy of the Revolution.
And the religious influence does not end there.
The Declaration itself references God four separate times, including the famous appeal to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
At the time of the Founding, legal scholars like William Blackstone argued that human law ultimately rested upon divine law.
“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature [established by God and observable in creation] and the law of revelation [found in the Bible, directly revealed by God, including the Ten Commandments], depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these,” Blackstone wrote.
That belief dominated early American legal thought and deeply influenced the generation that declared independence from Britain.
Which raises a question modern secular activists desperately do not want Americans asking:
What if the moral foundation of the American Revolution was rooted far more deeply in Christianity than today’s political establishment wants to admit?
