Packard, Hezekiah. The Christian's Manual; containing Some Thoughts on the following Subjects, viz. I. - On the Articles of the Christian Faith, with a concise Form of the Covenant annexed, II. - On Baptism. A dialogue. III. - On the Lord's Supper. IV. - On Prayer, with some Forms. V. - On Civil Government, by Question and Answer; To which is added, A part of a celebrated Sermon, on the neglect of Public Worship. The whole Designed for the Use of Families. Amherst, N. H.: Printed by Samuel Preston, March, 1801. First Edition. [9909]
Leather spine with plain blue paper over wooden boards, both boards nearly detached, 16 x 10 cm (6 1/4 x 4 inches). 84 pp., text complete, shaken, stained throughout. Fair. Hardcover.
The sermon at the end is "A part of Dean Swift's Sermon on sleeping at Church, with some alterations."
The chapter on civil government is a catechism on the American civil government, celebrating the liberties its citizens enjoyed.
Hezekiah Packard (1761-1849), b. North Bridgewater, Massachusetts; d. Salem, Mass. Rev. Packard was a Congregational minister of Unitarian beliefs. In 1775 he enlisted as a soldier in the Revolutionary army, serving at Cambridge, Bunker Hill, New York, Providence, & Newport, and was discharged near the end of the year 1776. He returned to the family farm in North Bridgewater.
A revival in the year 1780 in that place was the time he later pointed to for his own conversion. An injury to his arm in 1782 rendered him incapable of agricultural work, and in 1783 he entered Cambridge College, graduating in 1787. After further study he entered the ministry in 1793, at Chelmsford, Mass. He was pastor of several churches over the period of his ministry, and was a friend of revivals.
"He was of a true public spirit. He was an originator of the Bible Society of Lincoln County, Me., and of the Eastern Evangelical Society, which existed for a few years....For nearly fifty years, he was connected with various literary institutions in their Boards of Trust. He was member of the Board of Trustees and Overseers of Bowdoin College more than twenty years, and much of the time was actively engaged in the work of training youth, in which he was eminently successful." - Professor Alpheus S. Packard, of Bowdoin College. Quoted in Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, p. 285.
