A dispute in the winter of 1711/1712 over Susanna’s conduct of irregular worship services gives another stunning example of how far a woman’s conscience might oppose both the prerogatives of her husband and priest and the canons of the established church. The story, well known in Methodist legend because of its presumed impact on the nine-year-old John Wesley, ranks with the earlier theological, marital, and political quarrel over who was rightfully king (see chapter 1, the Yar-borough and Hickes correspondence, in part I of this volume).
On several occasions, Samuel Wesley Sr. attended the Church of England’s governing convocation in London. Whatever influence he might have had on church law—or might have gained hobnobbing with church power brokers—was bought at a considerable price. The cost of travel, food, lodging, and a curate to substitute for him at Epworth put a considerable dent in the family income. On this occasion, it also put him in conflict with his wife. During his absence she made a special effort in the continuing process of providing spiritual formation for her children. In addition to meeting with each child individually one evening a week, she also began to give special emphasis to family prayers on Sunday evening. Such a practice, which involved reading prayers and a sermon and discussing devotional topics, would not have been exceptional had it remained within the family However, word got out, and neighbors began attending in considerable numbers. More to the point, they began staying away from morning prayer, as conducted by the lackluster curate the Rev. Mr. Inman. Inman, hurt and scandalized, contacted the rector in London, who in turn wrote his wayward wife implying that she desist from holding her public meetings. The two letters suggest his side of the argument and give full scope to her effective rhetorical strategy, a fascinating balance of deference and defiance.
Her son John, future organizer of the Methodist movement, may not have sensed the controversy, but he was surely present at the Sunday evening services. His own society and class meetings, innovations that he likewise did not intend to rival the official church worship, may have had an unconscious model in his mother’s earlier experiment. Summing up her life at the time of her death, he was ready to place her in the same category as her many male clerical relatives and grant her the biblical title a “preacher of righteousness.”1 The effectiveness of his mother presiding at a public religious gathering may also have made him more receptive to the work of women in his own societies.
To Samuel Wesley Sr.
6 February 1711/12
Original missing. John Whitehead, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley … (New York: Worthington, 1881), 1:40–44, and Clarke, pp. 267–269, present the same full version, differing from one another only in punctuation. Thomas Coke and Henry Moore, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. (London: Paramore, 1792), pp. 241–244, greatly excerpt and somewhat rearrange it, following John Wesley’s own transcription in his Journal, 1 August 1742. The Journal version does add the address: “To the Rev. Mr. Wesley, In St. Margaret’s Church-Yard, Westminster.”
Epworth, February 6th, 1712
I heartily thank you for dealing so plainly and faithfully with me in a matter of no common concern. The main of your objections against our Sunday evening meetings are, first, that it will look particular; secondly, my sex; and lastly, your being at present in a public station and character. To all which I shall answer briefly.
As to its looking particular, I grant it does; and so does almost everything that is serious, or that may any way advance the glory of God or the salvation of souls, if it be performed out of a pulpit, or in the way of common conversation; because in our corrupt age the utmost care and diligence have been used to banish all discourse of God or spiritual concerns out of society, as if religion were never to appear out of the closet, and we were to be ashamed of nothing so much as of professing ourselves to be Christians.
To your second, I reply that as I am a woman, so I am also mistress of a large family. And though the superior charge of the souls contained in it lies upon you as head of the family and as their minister, yet in your absence I cannot but look upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent committed to me under a trust by the great Lord of all the families of heaven and earth. And if I am unfaithful to him or to you in neglecting to improve these talents, how shall I answer unto him, when he shall command me to render an account of my stewardship?
As these and other such like thoughts made me at first take a more than ordinary care of the souls of my children and servants; so, knowing that our most holy religion requires a strict observation of the Lord’s day, and not thinking that we fully answered the end of the institution by only going to church, but that likewise we are obliged to fill up the intermediate spaces of that sacred time by other acts of piety and devotion, I thought it my duty to spend some part of the day in reading to and instructing my family, especially in your absence, when, having no afternoon service, we have so much leisure for such exercises; and such time I esteemed spent in a way more acceptable to God than if I had retired to my own private devotions.
This was the beginning of my present practice: other people coming in and joining with us was purely accidental. Our lad told his parents—they first desired to be admitted; then others who heard of it begged leave also; so our company increased to about thirty and seldom exceeded forty last winter; and why it increased since, I leave you to judge after you have read what follows.
Soon after you went to London, Emily found in your study the account of the Danish missionaries,2 which, having never seen, I ordered her to read it to me. I was never, I think, more affected with anything than with the relation of their travels, and was exceeding pleased with the noble design they were engaged in. Their labours refreshed my soul beyond measure; and I could not forbear spending good part of that evening in praising and adoring the Divine goodness for inspiring those good men with such an ardent zeal for his glory, that they were willing to hazard their lives and all that is esteemed dear to men in this world, to advance the honour of their Master Jesus. For several days I could think or speak of little else. At last it came into my mind, though I am not a man nor a minister of the gospel, and so cannot be employed in such a worthy employment as they were; yet if my heart were sincerely devoted to God, and if I were inspired with a true zeal for his glory and did really desire the salvation of souls, I might do somewhat more than I do. I thought I might live in a more exemplary manner in some things; I might pray more for the people and speak with more warmth to those with whom I have an opportunity of conversing. However, I resolved to begin with my own children, and accordingly I proposed and observed the following method: I take such a proportion of time as I can best spare every night to discourse with each child by itself on something that relates to its principal concerns. On Monday I talk with Molly, on Tuesday with Hetty, Wednesday with Nancy, Thursday with Jacky, Friday with Patty, Saturday with Charles, and with Emily and Sukey together on Sunday.
With those few neighbours who then came to me I discoursed more freely and affectionately than before. I chose the best and most awakening sermons we had, and I spent more time with them in such exercises. Since this our company has increased every night, for I dare deny none that asks admittance. Last Sunday I believe we had above two hundred, and yet many went away for want of room.
But I never durst positively presume to hope that God would make use of me as an instrument in doing good; the farthest I ever durst go was, “It may be: who can tell? With God all things are possible.”3 I will resign myself to him; or, as Herbert better expresses it,
Only, since God doth often make
Of lowly matter, for high uses meet,
I throw me at His feet;
There will I lie until my Maker seek
For some mean stuff whereon to show His skill;
Then is my time.4
And thus I rested without passing any reflection on myself or forming any judgment about the success or event of this undertaking.
Your third objection I leave to be answered by your own judgment. We meet not on any worldly design. We banish all temporal concerns from our society; none is suffered to mingle any discourse about them with our reading or singing; we keep close to the business of the day, and as soon as it is over they all go home. And where is the harm of this? If I and my children went a-visiting on Sunday nights, or if we admitted of impertinent visits, as too many do who think themselves good Christians, perhaps it would be thought no scandalous practice, though in truth it would be so. Therefore, why any should reflect upon you, let your station be what it will, because your wife endeavours to draw people to the church and to restrain them by reading and other persuasion from their profanation of God’s most holy day, I cannot conceive. But if any should be so mad as to do it, I wish you would not regard it. For my part, I value no censure on this account. I have long since shook hands with the world, and I heartily wish I had never given them more reason to speak against me.
As for your proposal of letting some other person read. Alas! you do not consider what a people these are. I do not think one man among them could read a sermon without spelling a good part of it; and how would that edify the rest? Nor has any of our family a voice strong enough to be heard by such a number of people.
But there is one thing about which I am most dissatisfied; that is, their being present at family prayers. I do not speak of any concern I am under barely because so many are present, for those who have the honour of speaking to the great and holy God need not be ashamed to speak before the whole world, but because of my sex. I doubt if it be proper for me to present the prayers of the people to God.
Last Sunday, I fain would have dismissed them before prayers, but they begged so earnestly to stay that I durst not deny them.
To Samuel Wesley Sr.
25 February 1711/12
MA. John Wesley’s endorsement, part missing, “of her reading on Sund. Eveng.” Addressed to her husband “at Mr. Farmery’s in St. Margarets Churchyard, Westminster” and postmarked; yet there is no signature. The word (?) “copy” is scrawled at the bottom, after what appears to be a postscript, perhaps added by a later collector or compiler.
Dearest!
Some few days since I received a letter from you (I suppose) dated the 16th instant, which I made no great haste to answer, because I judged it necessary for both of us to take some time to consider before you determine in a matter of such great importance.
I shall pass no censure upon the hasty and unexpected change of your judgment, neither shall I inquire how it was possible that you should be prevailed on by the senseless clamours of two or three of the worst of your parish to condemn what you so very lately approved. But I shall in as few words as possible tell you my thoughts, which perhaps you’ll regard just as much as you did my last long, though otherwise not impertinent letter.
There is not that I can hear of more than three or four that is against our meeting, of which Inman is the chief, for no other reason, as I suppose, but that he thinks the sermons I read better than his own. He and Whitely, I believe, may call it a conventicle,5 and the other full as wisely calls it a puppet show. But we hear no outcry here, nor has any one person ever said one word against it to me. And what does their calling it so signify? Does that alter the nature of the thing? Or do you think that what they say is a sufficient reason for the forbearing a thing that hath already done much, and by God’s blessing may do more good? If its being called so by those that know in their own conscience they are mistaken did really make it one, what you say would be somewhat to the purpose; but ’tis plain in fact that this one thing has brought more people to church than ever anything did in so short a time. We used not to have above twenty or twenty-five at evening service, whereas now we have between two and three hundred, which is many more than ever came before to hear Inman in the morning.
Besides the constant attendance on the worship of God, it has wonderfully (as you guessed it would) conciliated the minds of this people toward us, insomuch that we now live in the greatest amity imaginable, and what is still better, they are very much reformed in their behaviour on the Lord’s Day, and those people which used to be playing in the streets, come now to hear a good sermon read, which surely is more acceptable to almighty God.
Another reason I have for what I do is I have no other way of conversing with this people and therefore cannot possibly do them any good beside, but by this I have an opportunity of exercising the greatest and noblest charity, viz. charity to their souls.
Some families which very seldom came to church now go constantly. One person that has not been there this seven year is now prevailed on to go with the rest.
There are many other good consequences of this meeting which I have not time to mention. Now I beseech you weigh all things in an impartial balance. On the one side the honour of almighty God, the doing much good to many souls, the friendship of the best among whom we live; on the other (if folly, impiety and vanity may abide in the scale against so ponderous a weight) the malicious senseless objections of a few scandalous persons, their laughing at us and censuring us as precise and hypocritical. And when you have duly considered all things, let me know your positive determination.
I need not tell you the consequences if you determine to put an end to our meeting. You may easily foresee what prejudices it may raise in the minds of these people against Inman especially, who has had so little wit as to speak publicly against it. ‘Tis true I can now keep them to the church, but if ’tis laid aside, I doubt6 they’ll never go to hear him more, at least those that come from the lower end of the town. Whereas, if this be continued till your return (which now will not be long), it may please God by that time so to change their hearts that they may love and delight in his public worship so as never to neglect it more.
I shall add but a few words more.
If you do after all think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me any more that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good to souls, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I dare not wish this practice of ours had never been begun, but it will be with extreme [?] grief that I shall dismiss them, because I foresee the consequences. I pray God direct and bless you.7
Mr. Hall desires to know of you whether Caywoods Instruments for Navigation are approved of at London, because if they be, he would get them.
1. 2 Peter 2:5. See his Journal entry for 1 August 1742. For evidence, he published his mother’s letter of 6 February 1711/12 to his father.
2. The king of Denmark, inspired by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), founded by Anglicans in 1701 to evangelize and organize church work in North America, sent Henry Pluetschau and Bartholomew Ziegenbalg to Tranquebar on the southern coast of India. Their letters home were translated into English in 1709 and dedicated by the translator, A. W. Boehm, to the SPG. The society, of which Samuel Wesley was an ardent supporter and for which his son John would later work in Georgia, bought and distributed 500 copies. It was probably one of these that Emily discovered in the rector’s study, though a Part II was published in 1710 and might have been in the Wesley home by the time this letter was written. A final volume, Part III, was published in 1718 by the direction of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, an organization allied to the SPG., See C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S. P. G… . , 2 vols. (London: SPG, 1901), 1:471–472.
3. See Mark 10:27.
4. “The Priesthood,” lines 34–39, from “The Church” in The Temple, in F. E. Hutchinson, ed., The Works of George Herbert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), p. 161. She has extracted verses from two stanzas, here quoted from the 1703 edition, p. 155:
Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my Hand
To hold the Ark, although it seem to shake
Through th’old Sins and new Doctrines of our Land.
Only, since God doth often Vessels make
Of lowly Matter for high Uses meet,
I throw me at his Feet.
There will I lie, untill my Maker seek
For some mean Stuff whereon to show his Skill:
Then is my Time. The distance of the Meek
Doth flatter Power. Lest good come short of Ill
In praising might, the Poor do by Submission
What pride by opposition.
5. The derogatory term for a Dissenter’s place of worship. Prior to the Toleration Act of 1689, conventicles were not only outside the Church of England, but also outside the law.
6. That is, suspect.
7. Several extra lines of space appear here, but the expected signature is missing. The subsequent few lines function as a sort of postscript.