1798 PETER THACHER. Discourses on Practical Subjects. Privately Printed Revolutionary War Chaplain.

Very scarce volume of the privately printed sermons of Peter Thacher [1715-1785]. Thacher graduated Harvard in 1737 where he seems to have sided with the young revivalists in the ongoing division there. Afterward, he became first minister of the Second Congregational Church in Attleborough, Massachusetts where he served with great faithfulness for over 40 years. Joseph Tracy records a season of revival about the time of his arrival.

Thacher also joined the cause of the American Revolutionary War, and, though 60 years old at the time, marched in Alarm in April of 1775 and then enlisted as a Chaplain in 1776, serving with both Captain Moses Willmarth's 9th Company and Colonel John Dagget's 4th Bristol Company. 

Privately printed volumes in general are relatively scarce from this period. We trace not a single example of the present in the auction record or available on the market at the time of cataloguing.

Contents include:

Sermon I. On Prayer. Ask What I Shall Give Thee [2 Chronicles 1.7]; Sermon II. God Will not Forsake His People [Hebrew 13.5]; Sermon III. The Gospel Invitation [Matthew 11.28]; Sermon IV. Future Happiness and Misery [Luke 16.25]; Sermon V. The Goodness of God [Psalm 34.8]; Sermon VI. The Hypocrite's Prayer [Jeremiah 2.26-28]

Thacher, Peter. Late Pastor of the Church at Attleborough. Select Discourses on Practical Subjects. Leominster, Massachusetts, Printed by John Prentiss, & Co. for Thomas Thacher - Princeton. 1798. 114pp.

Good in original full calf, rubbed at extremities, but attractive and sound. Sepia ink stained at the head of the text block as shown, growing less severe throughout the work and not rendering any text illegible.