6. Susanna Wesley and Eighteenth-Century Evangelists
6
Susanna Wesley and Eighteenth-Century Evangelists
What is poverty? Is it a line on a graph below which large numbers of people fall? I look back at my own childhood and imagine that many people today would say I lived in poverty. My earliest memories are of lantern lights, an outhouse, hand-me-down clothes, and a one-room school. But I kept warm on winter days huddling over the heat register fueled by the wood furnace, and I always had plenty to eat. Our family of seven was many things, but we insisted that we were not poor. We always had something to give to those we considered poorer than we were. Such was the case in the Wesley home, particularly under the influence of Susanna.
The Wesleys were small farmers as were we, though Samuel, Susanna’s husband, was also an Anglican minister. I can almost picture myself among all the children in that poorly heated, dilapidated house, having to go to the barn and tend the cows on bitterly cold mornings. I have visited the Wesley home in Epworth. It is a rather substantial dwelling, rebuilt after the original thatched-roof house was destroyed by fire when John (the fifteenth child of Susanna) was six years old.
Though I understand privation, it is difficult to envision the poverty into which John Wesley was born. It is very different from my own childhood situation. We worked hard and saved every penny and avoided debt like the plague. Not so Samuel Wesley. Never good with money, he was sent to debtor’s prison more than once, leaving Susanna to suffer alone with the children. On one occasion when she was asked about privation, she responded: “I will freely own to your grace that, strictly speaking, I never did want for bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eat, and to pay for it after [that] . . . it has made it very unpleasant to me. And I think to have bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all.”1 Though she admitted that such a hand-to-mouth existence had “made it very unpleasant to [her],” Samuel insisted, “[It] does not in the least sink my wife’s spirits. She bears it with courage which becomes her.”2
For young John, poverty was a way of life that he almost escaped through a servitorship at Oxford. With an education he was convinced he would never live that way again. But an incident there would change the course of his life:
He had just finished paying for some pictures for his room when one of the chambermaids came to his door. It was a cold winter day, and he noticed that she had nothing to protect her except a thin linen gown. He reached into his pocket to give her some money to buy a coat but found he had too little left. Immediately the thought struck him that the Lord was not pleased with the way he had spent his money. He asked himself, Will thy Master say, “Well done, good and faithful steward”? Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold! O justice! O mercy!—Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?3
Wesley’s movement from the beginning focused on humanitarian outreach. The Holy Club, scoffed at by other Oxford students, not only emphasized prayer, accountability, fasting, and Bible study, but also pushed its paltry membership into the outside world of destitution and misery. The young men ministered to orphans and prisoners and distributed food to the hungry. They accomplished their goals very methodically, and thus they were tagged Methodists.
In subsequent years, many women joined the movement as preachers and humanitarian workers. Among them were Mary Fletcher and Sarah Crosby. Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, a wealthy supporter, made generous gifts, though favoring the work of George Whitefield over that of Wesley. A High Church Anglican and never a Methodist herself, Susanna Wesley is rightly regarded as the mother of the movement.
SUSANNA WESLEY
Anglican Mother of the Methodists
It is too simplistic to present Susanna Wesley as the ultimate mother—a nineteen-kid-quiver-full, homeschooling, disciplinarian supermom and writer of rules—who stands up to her authoritarian husband and to King William III, a monarch who she insisted usurped the throne of England. The story contains more than an element of truth, but it bears examination that is rarely offered as it is repeated again and again online and in books. Those who know the story will find this two-sentence online response amusing: “She didn’t like the king, so her husband didn’t think they should keep sleeping together? After 19 kids, I’m thinking . . . okay!”
But is the account even true? The story of Susanna’s failure to say amen to her husband’s prayer for the king (which I have unwittingly repeated in my own earlier writings) deserves further examination. Indeed, it is tempting to turn the Wesley marriage into an extended stalemate of strong wills interspersed by enough sexual intimacy to account for nineteen babies.
Susanna, however, seems to be just as authoritarian—if not more so—than her husband. And King William of Orange, as a result of the Glorious Revolution, was on the English throne a dozen years before she supposedly refused to say amen to her husband’s prayer. Would her husband not have known that she held tenaciously to the concept of the divine right of kings (seeing William as a usurper) before that evening prayer? It is highly unlikely since she had made a habit of not joining in public days of prayer during the near decade-long span of King William’s War: “Since I am not satisfied of the lawfulness of the war, I cannot beg a blessing on our arms. . . . In the meantime, I think it my duty, since I cannot join in public worship, to spend the time others take in that, in humbling my soul before God for my own and the nation’s sins.”4
Born in London, the twenty-fifth—and last—child of Dr. Samuel Annesley, a noted Puritan preacher, Susanna grew up surrounded by older siblings and books. Times were tough, however, for nonconformist preachers, especially when the government levied heavy fines or confiscated their belongings. But in 1669, the year Susanna was born, her father was presiding over a congregation of some eight hundred in East London. With his encouragement, she was an independent thinker, in fact, so much so that at age thirteen she decided to align herself with the Church of England.
When she was twenty, Susanna married Samuel Wesley, twenty-eight. There is no reason to assume that he did not love and respect his strong-willed young wife, whom he affectionately called Sukey. Many years later he wrote to his son Samuel, admonishing him to “reverence and love your mother.” He went on to make his point very clear: “Though I should be jealous of any other rival in your breast, yet I will not be of her. The more duty you pay her, and the more frequently and kindly you write to her, the more you will please your affectionate father.”5
The most oft-repeated account about the aforementioned relationship between his parents was passed along by John himself. He had been told as a young boy that he was the child of his parents’ reconciliation. As the story goes, one evening more than a year before his birth, his father, during evening devotions, prayed for King William III. Susanna refused to say amen. Samuel said: “Sukey, if that be the case, you and I must part; for if we have two kings we must have two beds.”6 So he walked out on her—and the church, of which he was rector—returning only after Queen Anne, a Stuart whom Susanna could support, had ascended the throne. So with both supporting the same monarch, they could now sleep in the same bed. Nine months later John was born.
It’s a good story, but there are many reasons why it does not ring true of Samuel and Sukey. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine that Sukey spoke her mind on political issues on many occasions. She possessed far more chutzpah than one single meek failure to say amen. She was a demanding mother who homeschooled her children with a combination of severity and sympathy. One observer described her children as “a cluster of bright, vehement, argumentative boys and girls.”7
Susanna maintained strict standards of child discipline that have been praised far more often than emulated. “No one can, without renouncing the world, in the most literal sense, observe my method,” she later wrote. “There are few, if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they think may be saved without so much ado; for that was my principal intention, however unskillfully and unsuccessfully managed.”8 In a letter to her husband, she noted how she made a schedule so as to give each child private instruction and counsel: “I take such a proportion of time as I can spare every night to discourse with each child apart. 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 Suky together on Sunday.”9 But despite her efforts, her method had mixed results at best. One after another, her children struggled with serious problems in their relationships and suffered failed marriages.
John would later speak of his mother as a “preacher of righteousness,” identifying her thus alongside “her father, and grandfather, her husband, and her three sons.” In explaining this high tribute, he quoted letters from her to his father during one of his father’s prolonged absences. Here Susanna is defending her preaching, which began very innocently while she was teaching her own children on the Sabbath. The letter, dated “February 6, 1711 [or] 12” (when John would have been eight years old) is quoted in John Wesley’s journal:
This was the beginning of my present practice. Other people’s coming and joining with us was merely accidental. [One] lad told his parents: they first desired to be admitted; then others that heard of it begged leave also: so our company increased to about thirty, and it seldom exceeded forty last winter. . . . With those few neighbors that then came to me, I discoursed more freely and affectionately. I chose the best and most awakening sermons we have. And I spent somewhat more time with them in such exercises, without being careful about the success of my undertaking. Since this, our company increased every night; for I dare deny none that ask admittance. . . . Last Sunday I believe we had above two hundred. And yet many went away for want of room to stand.10
This is, for my money, one of the most fascinating letters in the whole of the eighteenth century, and what’s more, it is a direct challenge to her insecure husband. The letter leaves no doubt that it had been prompted by a missive from Samuel, apparently upset by her sudden popularity. His harsh preaching had never endeared him to the congregations, and, as her letter suggests, he was threatened by the feelings of admiration the people had for her:
I cannot conceive, why any should reflect upon you because your wife endeavors to draw people to church and to restrain them from profaning the Lord’s day by reading to them, and other persuasions. For my part, I value no censure upon this account. I have long since shaken hands with the world. And I heartily wish I had never given them more reason to speak against me. . . . As to its looking [peculiar], I grant it does. And so does almost anything that is serious, or that may any way advance the glory of God or the salvation of souls.11
Samuel insisted that she stop speaking to the newly formed home congregation. He offered a “proposal of letting some other person read.” She reminded him in no uncertain terms why his idea would not work—that he had failed to “consider what a people these are.” They were essentially illiterate, and no one had a voice that carried except for her: “I do not think one man among them could read a sermon, without spelling a good part of it. Nor has any of our family a voice strong enough to be heard by such a number of people.”12
So there! Stifle yourself, Samuel. Let me do the work of the Lord. But Susanna had her own struggles about what she was doing. She was a woman after all.
But there is one thing about which I am much 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 honor 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 is proper for me to present the prayers of the people to God. Last Sunday I would fain have dismissed them before prayers; but they begged so earnestly to stay, I durst not deny them.13
Susanna, well versed in theological and biblical studies as well as literature and languages, had no inclination to make a statement for women’s rights or to demonstrate her own capabilities over her husband’s. She regarded herself first and foremost as a wife and mother.
That John looked back on her ministry and identified her as a preacher of righteousness is most interesting, particularly in light of his assessment of her when she died at age seventy-two. He and his hymn-writing brother Charles, both still in their thirties, agreed that she should be honored with a poem for her tombstone. The epitaph, though a bit of a jingle, begins with typical sentimentality, but then goes on to speak of her “legal night of seventy years”—as though devoid of the light of the gospel until two years before she died. What an incredible insult to this devout Christian woman.
In sure and steadfast hope to rise,
And claim her mansion in the skies,
A Christian here her flesh laid down,
The cross exchanging for a crown.
True daughter of affliction, she,
Inured to pain and misery,
Mourn’d a long night of griefs and fears,
A legal night of seventy years.
The Father then revealed his Son;
Him in the broken bread made known;
She knew and felt her sins forgiven,
And found the earnest of her heaven.
Meet for the fellowship above,
She heard the call, “Arise, my love!”
“I come!” her dying looks replied,
And, lamb-like as her Lord, she died.
Samuel Wesley’s early biographer, Luke Tyerman, responded to such nonsense with strong words:
This is a monstrous perversion of facts, and can only be accounted for on the ground that John and Charles Wesley were so enamored of their blessed and newly discovered doctrines, that as yet they felt it difficult to think any one to be scripturally converted except those who . . . had experienced an instantaneous change of heart, under circumstances similar to their own. . . . Having read her letters and her other literary productions, we are satisfied that, if there ever was a sincere and earnest Christian, she was one.14
SELINA HASTINGS, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON
“Methodist Archbishop”
She was a “Methodist Archbishop,” so identified by George Whitefield, though she ranked herself a notch lower, and then only in jest when she wrote: “Dear Mr. Jones must indulge this bishop with his presence.”15 She was a wealthy woman who saw herself as a key player in “this present Reformation” of the Church of England.
Lady Selina was born into wealth and nobility, and her marriage at age twenty-one to Theophilus Hastings brought her the title Countess of Huntingdon. Like John Wesley, her life would span most of the eighteenth century (1707–91). Her childhood was marred by her feelings of abandonment by Lady Mary, her mother, who, unbeknownst to the young Selina, had contracted syphilis. Ever loyal to her beloved father, she did not know that his infidelity was the cause of her mother’s terrible affliction. As an adult, Selina herself would endure serious physical ailments as well as the early deaths of four of her seven children. She also slogged through decades of disputes with siblings over her father’s estate.
In 1739, in the midst of her troubles, she joined John Wesley’s new movement. In fact, only a year earlier he had testified that he felt his “heart strangely warmed” while attending a meeting at Aldersgate Street. After her husband died some seven years later, Selina embarked on full-time ministry in an effort to convert well-heeled aristocrats. By that time her taste for lively preaching had drawn her more closely to Whitefield. Indeed, she invited guests to her home, to hear not a gifted musician but rather a fiery evangelist.
Soon Selina was funding chapels, sixty-four altogether, as well as Trevecca House, a preacher training school. She served as an unofficial bishop, supplying chapels with young men whose preaching carried a decided Calvinistic slant. In fact, she became deeply embroiled in the much-publicized doctrinal dustup between Wesley and Whitefield, clearly siding with the latter, while at the same time seeking harmony.
Like Wesley’s ministers, those who served under Selina were circuit preachers. She mapped out their territories and often accompanied them on their tours of England and Wales. Speaking of her own call to preach, she wrote: “With respect to myself this has been the matter between the Lord and my own heart. . . . He has favoured me with many more voices for Him, and where mine could not have reached; yet always this constant reserve before Him that His call . . . should carry me to the ends of the earth for Him.”16
Ever loyal to the Church of England, Selina walked a tightrope, especially after 1779, when the church began requiring that all chapels be registered as “dissenting places of worship.” As such, wealthy aristocrats stayed away in droves. Labeled a dissenter, Selina was heartbroken: “I am to be cast out of the Church now only for what I have been doing this forty years—speaking and living for Jesus.”17 Yet she carried on in ministry until her death in 1791 despite tight regulation and frequent bouts of illness.
Selina’s physical frailties and loss of young children, as well as her struggles with siblings and her ecclesiastical and doctrinal disputes, were surely enough to turn her into an autocratic and cranky old lady as she was sometimes accused of being. But she was also beset with inner conflict. John Wesley’s teaching on entire sanctification did not countenance the sin of pride, the very trademark of British high society. To Charles Wesley, her confidante and counselor, she wrote that his brother John believed him to be too lenient with her on spiritual matters: “He wants me to be more a poor sinner . . . and indeed when I think of myself at all I feel it as a sore burden too heavy for me to bear.”18
In an effort to cast out her pride, she frequently employed various forms of self-deprecation: “I often think of myself a very Herod in a gorgeous robe of profession, such a poor, wretched, creature do I seem to myself.” To eradicate pride, she repeatedly referred to herself in demeaning terms: “unworthy worm,” “poor, vile and foolish creature,” “vile worm,” “worthless worm,” “poor worm,” “poor, vile, blind fool,” “poor, worthless, simple worm,”19 and the list goes on.
As obsessed as she was with the sin of pride, Selina appeared to be entirely oblivious to the sin of slaveholding. Perhaps her blind admiration for Whitefield played a part. A one-time critic of slavery, he had sought to support his orphanage work in colonial Georgia with a slave plantation. On his death, Selina inherited the oversight of both the orphanage and the plantation. In an effort to keep them both afloat, she increased the number of slaves from fifty to well over one hundred—that, despite the strong antislavery stance of the Wesleys and many of her circuit preachers.
How she could justify her actions is difficult to comprehend. Unlike antebellum planters, who had often been born into the system, she became a slaveholder as a mature woman who could have found other means of fund-raising for the orphanage. Did the utter incongruity of her actions ever occur to her? Perhaps not. Lady Selina Hastings was a complicated woman who utilized her social status and wealth to carry out God’s work as she saw fit. That she was unable to see the evil of slavery scuffs the shine on any sort of saintliness we might want to bestow on her.
SARAH RYAN
Social Activist and Enemy of John Wesley’s Wife
If we wish to look back at a time when marriages were rock solid and separation was rare among Christians, the early Wesleyan movement would not be the place to start. Although John Wesley’s parents had endured conflict and frequent separations in their marriage, they were married until death did them part. Not so with John’s sisters, Susanna, Hetty, and Martha. And John’s own marriage to Molly also fell apart. Such was the case as well with some of his most prominent followers. Sarah Crosby, who would later become a trusted preacher, married in 1750 and became a Methodist class leader in 1752. The marriage was troubled from the start, ending in 1757, when her husband left her for the final time. Of this marriage she had written:
A short time after this I married, and can truly say, my ultimate end in so doing was to live more to the glory of God. . . . Before this I desired to suffer, but now I began to do so in reality; and because I can hardly bear to reflect on some of my trials, much less relate them, I shall pass over what I now went through in silence: it is sufficient, God knoweth it all. The Lord had before allured me, now he began to lead me into the wilderness.20
It was her colleague and friend Sarah Ryan, however, whose marriage problems and relationship with Wesley created scandal in the movement. Sarah Ryan was converted through the preaching of George Whitefield and then was actively involved in the Foundry, an abandoned building that became the center for John Wesley’s Methodist movement. Soon after this, at nineteen, Sarah married a man who she learned was not only destitute but also married to another woman. When he abandoned Sarah, she married a sailor who left her to live in America. Her third marriage was to an Italian who likewise abandoned her.
That she was married three times was considered bad enough, but that she had married twice without ever having been divorced was no less than scandalous—though apparently not regarded as such by Wesley. In fact, she later related how he had influenced her in her second marriage:
And now I received a letter from my husband, reminding me of an agreement between us, that I should follow him to New-England . . . and I really imagined, that it was the will of God, that I should go to him. But after some time, I thought I will ask Mr. Wesley’s advice, which I accordingly did. After we had conversed a little, he said, “Can he maintain you there[?]” I answered, “Yes: but can I go, and save my soul?” He replied “What do you think of it, Sally?” Instantly light broke in, and I said, “No, Sir, I cannot.” I went home, and soon after wrote, and told him, “At the peril of my soul I dare not come.”21
After her third husband had abandoned her, Wesley appointed Sarah, then in her early thirties, housekeeper at the Kingswood School in Bristol, a managerial position that required strong leadership skills and spiritual maturity. Wesley’s wife, Molly, was furious when she learned of it. According to Mary Fletcher, Molly blasted Sarah during a conference at the school when dozens of preachers were seated around a large table. Sarah was in charge of the meal service. Molly entered and said in a loud voice: “See that whore who is serving you! She hath three husbands now alive!” And she did not end there as Mary went on to relate: “With all the depreciating things she could say, as she was going on, Sister Ryan set down in a chair which stood near her, with her eyes shut.”22
Molly had reason to be upset, and not simply because her husband had given a “whore” an important position at the Bristol school. Wesley, like at least three other men before him, had apparently become more than a little enamored of Sarah. His marriage was already on the rocks, and she had captured his heart, as he confided in a letter to her:
The conversing with you, either by speaking or writing, is an unspeakable blessing to me. I cannot think of you without thinking of God. Others often lead me to Him; but it is, as it were, going round about: you bring me straight into His presence. Therefore, whoever warns me against trusting you, I cannot refrain, as I am clearly convinced He calls me to it.23
In the jargon of entire sanctification, this was no less than a love letter. Molly, who rifled through his coat pocket and read the letter before he sent it, recognized that in a heartbeat. She was livid. “Last Friday, after many severe words, my wife left me, vowing she would see me no more,” Wesley wrote to Sarah in January 1758. “In the evening, while I was preaching at the chapel, she came into the chamber where I had left my clothes, searched my pockets, and found the letter. . . . I afterwards found her in such a temper as I have not seen her in for several years. She has continued in the same ever since.”24
Wesley was smitten by Sarah, perhaps panting as he wrote: “I am eager to receive your next letter with excitement as always.” At one point, she had apparently apologized for being too familiar with him. He wrote back: “I not only excuse but love your simplicity; and whatever freedom you use it will be welcome.” He couched his words in spiritual tones, but she would have understood the double meaning: “You have refreshed my bowels in the Lord: I feel your words, and praised God on your behalf. . . . Surely God will never suffer me to be ashamed of my confidence in you. I have been censured for it by some of your nearest friends; but I cannot repent of it.”25
Many in Wesley’s movement blamed Sarah for the dissolution of his marriage. Each spouse blamed the other, and Molly spread the word that her husband had traveled alone with Sarah. But despite the accusations and scandal, Molly came back time and again until 1774. She died in 1781, a fact that Wesley grudgingly acknowledged: “I came to London, and was informed that my wife died on Monday. This evening she was buried, though I was not informed of it till a day or two after.”26
Despite the rumors surrounding her, Sarah continued on in her position at the Kingswood School for some years after Molly’s outburst. In that capacity she also served as a class leader, meeting with dozens of people each week. She also traveled widely, meeting with Methodist societies. In 1762, she moved to London to work with Sarah Crosby and Mary Fletcher in establishing the Leytonstone orphanage, later relocated in Yorkshire to accommodate Sarah’s failing health. She died six years later at forty-three.
In 1782, a year after his wife had died, Wesley published some of his correspondence to and from Sarah, stating that her letters “breathe deep, strong sense and piety. I know few like them in the English tongue.”27 Sarah had also been praised by Mary Fletcher, fifteen years younger than she, who described her as her “mother in Christ” and wrote: “Our hearts were united as David and Jonathan’s.”28
MARY BOSANQUET FLETCHER
Megabarn Preacher
For nearly sixty years she served as one of the most capable associates of John Wesley. Born into wealth, Mary turned away from the affluent lifestyle of her family and left home at eighteen to set out on her own. It was nothing short of scandalous. That she identified herself as a Methodist only added to the disgrace her family felt. But she had John Wesley—and God—on her side, and she never looked back. With money from her grandmother’s estate and the help of Sarah Ryan, she established an orphanage as well as a Methodist society in Leytonstone, where they found themselves most unwelcome.
Methodists were persecuted, and Mary and Sarah, like John Wesley himself, were assailed with obscenities and pelted with dirt. Mary carried on after Sarah’s death. But as time passed and her inheritance dwindled, she began dreaming of the unmarried John Fletcher, a brilliant Anglican vicar and strong supporter of Wesley. She did not know that Fletcher had written to Charles Wesley, asking his advice about a marriage proposal to her, though confiding his fears that she might not make a good wife. Fifteen years went by as each contemplated the other. Finally Mary wrote to Wesley about him, and shortly thereafter Fletcher wrote to her. After several months of correspondence and private meetings, they were married. Mary was forty-two, he, ten years her senior.
After their brief wedding ceremony, they spent time in hymn singing and discussion with friends. Fletcher read the familiar words from the apostle Paul: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” His spontaneous comments would serve Mary well: “My God, what a task! Help me, my friends, by your prayers to fulfil it. As Christ loved the Church! He laid aside his glory for her!” He continued with Paul’s words: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,” and Mary added, “as unto the Lord.” Again, his words were reassuring: “Well, my dear, only in the Lord. And if ever I wish you to do any thing otherwise, resist me with all your might.”29
Encouraged by her husband, Mary continued preaching at Methodist meetings as she had done before. Yet she was very conscious of criticism, not wishing to offend anyone opposed to women preachers, especially one who delivered what was thought to be an actual sermon (as she had done). “For some years I was often led to speak from a text,” she explained. “Of late I feel greater approbation in what we call expounding, taking a part or whole of a chapter and speaking on it.”30 Thus she was only offering spontaneous commentary on the reading of the Scripture, rather than reading a prepared sermon. She likewise stood on the steps in front of the pulpit rather than behind it.
John and Mary’s was a strong marriage, but it lasted only “three years, nine months, and two days.” Fletcher was a sickly man who had been near death on several occasions. Mary was heartbroken. “It seems to me,” she later wrote to a friend, “I both love and miss him every day more and more. . . . Never did I know three years of such suffering.”31
Although Wesley wanted her to relocate in London (150 miles southeast), where he believed her ministry would be more fruitful, she continued her work at Madeley, at the invitation of the new vicar. Here she strengthened the bond of unity between the Methodists and the Anglicans that her husband had labored to maintain. She was a popular preacher and was able to draw crowds in the thousands, though not in the Anglican church building itself. Her primary venue was the nearby “tythe barn,” where she preached on Sunday afternoon and evening and weekday evenings as well. Though convinced that God had empowered her in ministry, she understood her opposition:
I know the power of God which I have felt when standing on the horseblock in the street at Huddersfield; but at the same time I am conscious how ridiculous I must appear in the eyes of many for so doing. Therefore, if some persons consider me as an impudent woman, and represent me as such, I cannot blame them.32
Mary continued preaching, sometimes three or four times a week, until her death at seventy-six. She had lived thirty years as a widow, and the searing sorrow that had so consumed her in the years immediately after her husband’s death had all but vanished. She testified of her mystical communion with him. “My house is a sweet rest,” she wrote in later years. “I have peace within. . . . I have communion with my friends above.”33
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
What an incredibly fascinating group of women surrounded John Wesley. One measly chapter does not begin to capture their story. Susanna’s life and legacy have particularly captivated me. On a recent holiday in England, I spent a sunny September afternoon meandering through her house and gardens in Epworth. As a onetime minister’s wife and mother myself, I resonate with her, though as children go, she trumps me 19:1. I can’t imagine how she alone, when her husband was away, managed to conduct an organized household and even do a little preaching on the side.
But if we imagine that Susanna Wesley would fit in with our book club or Bible study, we might be sadly mistaken. She was a High Church Anglican, a very strict disciplinarian, and a drinker (though vowing never to “drink above two Glasses of any strong Liquor at one time”) who was convinced a resident ghost was living upstairs. She talked back to her authoritarian husband, and her engaging sermons drew people to church when he was absent.
John Wesley worked closely with Bishop Selina and affirmed women preachers, the most noted of whom was Mary Fletcher. Sometimes drawing thousands, she would be the first of such intrepid Methodist women, with dozens more highly acclaimed women in the nineteenth century and later. Wesley’s life spans most of the eighteenth century as does the life of the famed literary critic and philosopher Dr. Samuel Johnson, who remarked: “A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on its hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”34 The prejudice embodied in this remark has persisted over time, thus impeding a serious assessment of the female preaching tradition and its role in shaping social and literary discourse.
Today as I write, online media seems almost obsessed with matters relating to insurance coverage for birth control and the definition of marriage. But when we travel three centuries back in time to the early decades of the eighteenth century, we might wonder how Susanna would have responded to easily accessible birth control. And what do we make of the definition of marriage? Did Samuel simply walk out over a trivial difference of opinion? If not, how did John come up with such a tale? And what of his own marriage, and his apparent emotional affair with Sarah Ryan, who never bothered to obtain a divorce before remarrying? Sarah Crosby likewise had an estranged marriage, as did Susanna’s daughters. Only Mary’s marriage to John Fletcher, though short, stands as a model for today.
QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT
Which of Susanna’s qualities and attributes do you most admire? If you had a magical opportunity to welcome her into your home for a few days, how would you entertain her? Besides the Bible, what books would you make available? What favorite haunts would you visit, and what friends would you invite along?
What do you make of Lady Selina’s verbal self-abnegation? How might you counsel her—or would you suggest a therapist more qualified than yourself? What do you imagine she was thinking in her involvement as a slaveholder, despite strong criticism? Are you ever inconsistent in what you perceive as sinful—perhaps emphasizing minor misconduct while ignoring major transgression?
Imagine yourself a friend of both Sarah Ryan and Molly Fletcher. How would you have separately counseled them? Have you ever had to stand between two women involved with the same man?
How do you assess Mary’s long interest in John and her subsequent marriage? Would you have wanted to interfere and get them together many years sooner? Do you have any experiences that help you to resonate with her years of deep grief? Have you ever had a mystical sense of communicating with deceased loved ones?
How would you relate to Mary Fletcher as a preacher? Do you know of any women preachers today who can draw large crowds as she did?
Which one of the lives of these four women would you most want to unravel if you had the resources to research and write a full-length biography?