The Doctrine of Sovereign Grace by Isaac Backus and published by Classics.
This outstanding volume of sermons contains the following material.
* THE DOCTRINE OF SOVEREIGN GRACE - OPENED & VINDICATED (1771)
* ELECTION, PERSEVERANCE AND GOD'S DECREES (1789)
* THE SOVEREIGN DECREES OF GOD (1773)
* THE GREAT FALLING AWAY: The Last Days in Fulfilment (1773)
Isaac Backus (1724-1806) was foremost a pastor; but his importance to American Baptist and the Church in general is immense. "The role which Backus played during the formative years of his denomination in America was so crucial that he has been termed the father of American Baptists." Roger Williams may have been the biological father of Baptists in America but Backus stands as their adoptive father. What Rogers began, Backus consolidated and gave a clear mandate to.
In particular, Backus restored to Baptists their theological roots which had been mostly lost in the years after Williams. He, became the chief spokesman for the 'evangelical Calvinism' which replaced the Arminianism prevalent among the older Baptist churches. In spite of the Calvinism of the earliest New England Baptists, a shift to the Arminian outlook had been completed by the time of the Awakening. The 'Separate Baptists' largely followed the 'evangelical Calvinism' of Jonathan Edwards. Backus was their chief spokesman, articulating in the Baptist context the themes of sovereign grace which had been so eloquently espoused by Edwards."
