A Faithful Narrative of the Remarkable Revival of Religion in the Congregation of Easthampton, on Long-Island, In the year of our Lord, 1764...and also An Account of the Revival of Religion in Bridgehampton & Easthampton, In the Year 1800

Sag-Harbor: Alden Spooner, 1808. Hardcover. Good. 2mo, 144 pp, with engraved frontis portrait of the author. A good copy in original paper-covered wooden boards (with much of the paper worn away) with leather spine. Front joint cracked and board loosened but still secured by stitching. Child's doodles on front free endpaper, early ownership signature on title page, a bit of old dampstaining. Samuel Buell (1716-1798), an acolyte of Jonathan Edwards who came of age during the Great Awakening (graduating from Yale in 1741), was one of the leaders of the wave of religious revivals that swept New England and the Mid-Atlantic states in the mid 1760s. The title of this work, like several other revival narratives of the era, openly acknowledges the author's debt, both literary and spiritual, to Edwards' highly influential Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737). Buell's account of the 1764 revival among his Long Island congregation was first published in 1766. This edition adds a sketches of his life and those of his daughter and son, as well as short accounts of two other periods (1785 and 1800) of uncommon religious enthusiasm in Buell's community. The effects of such revivals, he concludes, "were highly salutary. The vestiges of scepticism and infidelity were swept away; and differences and prejudices, which had long interrupted the peace of society, were happily healed." Sabin 8983.