Eleven Revolutionary sermons preached on fast days, 1775--1776, by Rev. Isaiah Dunster of Harwich

This edition faithfully reproduces a fair copy of Reverend Isaiah Dunster's original holograph manuscript Isaiah Dunster of Harwich, 11 Revolutionary Sermons Preached on Fast Days, 1775 & 1776. A critical apparatus reveals the heavily revised state of the manuscript. An introduction and commentary provide information relevant to the life of Dunster, the composition of the text, its physical making, and the allusions to biblical, historical, and literary history in the sermons themselves. This will serve to preserve and make readily available this locally- and historically-valuable artifact. The sermons record the hopes and fears of the minister and his congregation as they awaited the uncertain outcome of a bloody internecine conflict.;Dunster, second minister of the First Church of Harwich, wrote a total of eleven sermons to be delivered on six fast days. Days of public fasting, humiliation, and prayer were a longstanding tradition in Massachusetts Bay by the Revolutionary Period. Having faced many hardships in their earliest days in the New England, the earliest settlers of the colony proclaimed the public observance of fast days in order to petition God to forgive their sins, the "procuring cause" (Dunster's term) of their sufferings. As the tensions mounted between Britain and Massachusetts Bay (and the other colonies) during 1775 and 1776, fast days were proclaimed and observed more frequently than any time before or since. A total of six days of public fasting was ordered (three each year), four by the Provincial Congress of the Massachusetts and two by the Continental Congress.;Dunster's great-grandfather, Henry, immigrated to New England in 1640 and became the first president of Harvard College shortly after his arrival. He saw the college through its earliest trying years when it was in danger of being closed, and he laid the foundation, for example its curriculum and finances, for its future success. Ministers of New England were trained at Harvard (and much later at Yale) after which they would find settlements among the congregations of Massachusetts. Isaiah was the first of the Dunster family to graduate from Harvard.