As any reader of her letters and journals will affirm, Susanna Wesley was fully capable of sustained theological essays. Her’s was a facile pen, her favorite topic was “practical divinity,” and more than a few of her letters or longish journal entries might easily pass for publishable essays. Length, subject matter, and even genre alone, therefore, do not necessarily warrant the creation of a third category of her writings. There are, though, a significant group of texts that she intended for a wider audience than herself (in the case of her journals) or than a single correspondent (as for her letters)—texts of considerable length, even by her standards, that cluster topically around her educational and theological concerns. Thus, here is a final section consisting of five essays: Susanna Wesley’s long letter, “commissioned” (and later printed) by her son John, outlining her educational method; her exposition on the Apostles’ Creed, in the form of a letter to her daughter Susanna (called Suky by the family); a second unfinished letter to Suky beginning an exposition of the Ten Commandments; a theological dialogue or “Religious Conference” constructed as if it were a conversation between herself and her eldest daughter, Emilia; and a final piece, actually published at the end of her life, an anonymous defense of her son John in his public quarrel with his one-time associate George Whitefield over the doctrine of predestination.
Taken together, these writings do not so much express new ideas or address new topics (though there are important exceptions) as reveal a more sustained attention to her favorite issues and a more magisterial persona. Her child rearing finished, she reflected on the method that made it possible, and even successful, under trying circumstances. The family having been scattered after a fire destroyed the Epworth rectory, Susanna Wesley exercised her parental duty as catechist and wrote two treatises interpreting the Creed and the Decalogue for her adolescent daughters—and then crafted an even more sophisticated dialogue that opened up additional areas of current theological debate. Finally, as an older woman, she demonstrated a flare for public controversy, entering the lists against a rising revivalist star and faring quite well. In each instance she drew on her wide stock of reading, as well as her own experience, in constructing these effective and authoritative pieces.
These writings are the work of three decades in the early eighteenth century. Her catechetical writings (the Creed and Decalogue expositions and the “Religious Conference”) date from the early 1710s, obviously motivated both by the life stage the Wesley daughters were passing through and the rectory fire that made daily contact with their “tutor” impossible. Her letter outlining how she went about the work of educating (not to mention organizing) her children conies from the early 1730s, by which time her youngest child, daughter Kezia, was about 23, and there was leisure to reflect on past practice. The final piece, her pamphlet arguing against George Whitefield’s predestinarian views on behalf of her son John, dates from 1741, at the very end of her life, demonstrating her ability to rise even then to yet another pedagogical occasion. In that each of these occasions was rather different, more detailed introductory material precedes each of the essays.