Serious Godliness
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all things are naked and bare before him, you cannot deceive him, for he is infinite wisdom ; you cannot fly from him for he is everywhere; you cannot bribe him, for he is righteousness itself.'! The same emphasis occurs frequently in Susanna's own writings. In 1710, her schoolboy son Samuel wrote from Westminster, complaining that he was 'as unstable as water' in his efforts to live the Christian life, and seeking her advice and help. Her first instruction was : 'Endeavour to get as deep an impression on your mind as is possible, of the awful and constant presence of the great and holy God. Consider frequently, that wherever you are, or whatever you are about, he always adverts to your thoughts and actions, in order to a future retribution. He is about our beds, and about our paths, and spies out all our ways; and whenever you are tempted to the commission of any sin, or the omission of any duty, make a pause, and say to yourself,—What am I about to do? God sees me!'?
What she preached to her children, she practised herself.
In one of her morning meditations she reminded herself:
'Religion is not to be confined to the church, or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and mediation. Everywhere we are in the presence of God, and every word and action is capable of morality.'* Not many months after her letter to young
Samuel, on 21st April 1711, she wrote for her own benefit the same advice. She had been meditating on the need to be scrupulously truthful in recounting actions and events, 'lest your invention supply the defect of your memory, ever remembering you are in the presence of the great and holy
God. Every sin is a contradiction and offence to some divine attribute. Lying is opposite and offensive to the truth of God.'4 On another occasion she urged herself, 'Be careful to .
. maintain a constant habitual sense of God in your 1 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 19 (2).
2 Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 145f.
8 Wesley Banner (1852), IV, 201.
4 Headingley MSS, A. f. 28.
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mind. Live and act as in his presence; think often of his omnipresence and omniscience ; of his power, wisdom, goodness, justice, truth, &c., and above all, of his infinite purity, which will be a check upon the mind, and be the best preservative against all temptations.'?
These extracts may suggest that living in the great Taskmaster's eye was a grim business. It would seem that God's omnipresence was interpreted far more as jealous oversight than guardian care. It was indeed a God-fearing form of piety, which bred a deep reverence for the divine holiness.
Yet, more fundamental than reverent fear was the supreme motive of love to God. Dr Annesley had taught that love to God was the mainspring of all Christian living: "Do all you do out of love to God. Spiritual love-sickness is the soul's healthfullest condition. When love to God is both cause, means, motive and end of all our activity in the business of Religion, then the soul is upon the wing towards its rest. Then is our love to other things regular, when the alone goodness of God moves us to love them.'? Susanna echoes her father with impressive frequency at this point. She reasons sternly with herself that, "I'o apprehend God displeased . .
. and yet to be capable of relishing the childish amusements of the world is an argument ofa vain and irreligious mind. That person that truly loves God above all things . . . is as incapable of rest, or satisfaction of mind, under a sense of: his anger, as his body would be at ease when labouring under an acute distemper.
If, therefore, this be your case, be assured you do not love God as you ought to do.' Next day, with money troubles pressing upon her, she urges herself: 'Learn by practice to love God above all things, and you will be out of the power of the world, and then to be without wealth will give no uneasiness.' Elsewhere she meditates: 'We must love the 1 Headingley MSS, A. f. 34.
* The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 22.
® Wesley Banner (1852), IV, 201.
"Tbid., IV, 202.
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Lord our God with all the heart, with all the mind, with all the soul, and with all the strength. We must love him so as to desire him, desire him so as to be uneasy without him, without his favour, without some resemblance, such as our nature, in this imperfect state, can bear, of him.'!
In her struggle to make the love of God central to her whole life, Susanna might have been consciously modelling herself upon her father's precepts. In a sermon on Psalm 97:
1-2, "The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice,' Dr Annesley urged: 'If a good man should be deprived of his temporal comforts, it will commend spiritual ones the more to him.
God's voice is never so sweet, as when he speaks comfortably in a wilderness.' That was a truth Susanna knew experimentally, as she soldiered on in the penury of Epworth rectory, surrounded by the desolate fenland of the Isle of Axholme.
Her father continued his counsel: 'Be very serious and frequent in your meditations upon God's governing the world.'
Few could have been as serious and frequent as his youngest 'daughter. His final injunction, which might stand as the ' watchword of Susanna's whole devotional life, exhorted his hearers to "perseverance in godliness', and assured them,
"You may live by faith, while you walk by rule; you may walk believingly and cheerfully, while you walk regularly.'? He amplified the point in a sermon on Ecclesiastes 6:1 1-12, arguing that it is only 'serious godliness' which 'sweetens all the bitterness of a poor condition, bears up the heart under all those difficulties that were otherwise intolerable; GOD makes up their worldly poverty with riches of grace.' Therefore, he advised his hearers, 'Make conscience of both sorts of duties, religious and worldly; and allot fit and distinct times for heavenly and worldly business; but with this difference, let religion mix itself with worldly business, and 1 Headingley MSS, A.f. 26. For the same motif in Wesley, see M. Schmidt,
John Wesley: A Theological Biography, 1, 116.
2 Christian Library, ed. Wesley, XXIV, 37f., 30f.
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spare not; but let not the world break in upon religion.'* The framework of Susanna's piety was that of Puritan
Method. It involved a carefully ordered timetable, so that she could scrupulously fulfil all her household and teaching duties, and at the same time make allowance for her more specifically religious exercises. Of course her household tasks were not undertaken as mere chores, but as themselves in their measure religious acts. Yet the steady ardour which she brought to her domestic duties depended for its source and kindling upon her withdrawal from her family for private devotion, for an hour both morning and evening, with a briefer break at noon. The effect on her children of their mother's punctual withdrawals from the busy life of the household can well be imagined. They divined, as John's mature testimony shows, that here was the source of her poise and serenity, her unruffled control of all the pressing business of the day.
The cast of her piety has been described by Dr Martin Schmidt as an 'intellectualist and voluntary mysticism'.
Certainly her emphasis on the will, on humility, and on the outworking of prayer in love to neighbour, are all strongly reminiscent of the mysticism of St Teresa and The Interior
Castle. There is no evidence that Susanna came directly under the influence of Teresa's writings, though these were known to Dr Annesley, who referred in a sermon to "Teresia's
Maxim, "All that is not God is nothing" '.2 What is certain is that another Roman Catholic work, Lorenzo Scupoli's
Pugna Spiritualis or Spiritual Conflict, held a central place in her devotion. Written by an Italian monk of the Theatine
Order, this book had become known in England through a Spanish translation by Juan de Castaniza.?
Its message centred round the call to Christian perfection, and it called ? Christian Library, ed. Wesley, XXIV, 428f., 451.
* A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley (1676), p. 26.
* The Spiritual Conflict was published in English in a modern edition, under the title of Unseen Warfare, by E. Kadloubovski and G. E. H. Palmer (1952)
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upon man, in the words of Dr Schmidt, to 'hate himself, renounce his own Ego, and turn with whole-hearted love to God. It is not feeling but the understanding and the will which are addressed in the first place; hence this is primarily an intellectualist and voluntary mysticism, even if the emotional element follows'.! The essential factor in Christian obedience, according to the Spiritual Conflict, was the virtus patientiae, the readiness to suffer. It involved a willingness to accept awkward people and unpleasant circumstances as all grist to the mill of perfection.
At this point in Susanna's devotion, however, in her striving after Christian perfection, it is possible to trace a more direct and homely influence upon her, in the teaching and practice of her father. Dr Annesley's life was marked by a constant struggle to submit himself to the divine will, such as is enjoined by the Spiritual Conflict. Significantly, Daniel
Williams stressed this aspect of his friend's Christian life in the funeral sermon he preached on Dr Annesley : "He obeyed
- -God's will as he had notice of it, and whatever labour, expense, or danger attended it. This will of God he still
(i.e. always) consulted, as to the matter and manner of his performances.'* Annesley himself came close to the spirit of the Spiritual Conflict, when he defined the meaning of 'serious godliness' as 'to hate sin, and love holiness, to live a life of faith, in dependence upon God, and resignation to him; to live above the transports of hopes and fears about things temporal; and to grow up in the graces and comforts of the HOLY GHOST, for things eternal'. It is possible, then, that Susanna was in a measure predisposed towards the Spiritual
Conflict by her father's typically Puritan conception of the Christian life as a Holy War.
Yet her devotion was never exclusively dominated by the 1M. Schmidt, Fohn Wesley: A Theological Biography, 1, 48f.
2D. Williams, The Excellency of a Publick Spirit, p. 5.
3 Christian Library, ed. Wesley, XXIV, 425. For this same theme in Susanna's writings, see Wesley Banner, [V, 286, 324.
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Spiritual Conflict, nor by atry one book of personal piety. She was deliberately eclectic in her approach, and ranged in her reading from 4 Kempis to Samuel Clark the Deist. Of the Anglican divines she read Bishop Beveridge and Dr Rust, as well as Henry More and John Norris ('Dr More' and 'Mr Norris'), the Cambridge Platonists. Pascal she quotes both in her theological writings and her private correspondence. A letter she wrote to John and Charles in 1732 gives an interesting glimpse of her theological reading, and shows her independent turn of mind:
'The Life of God in the Soul of Man', is an excellent good book, and was an acquaintance of mine many years ago; but I have unfortunately lost it. There are many good things in Castaniza; more in Baxter; yet are neither without faults, which I overlook for the sake of their virtues. Nor can I say, of all the books of divinity I have read, which is the best; one is best at one time, one at another, according to the temper and disposition of the mind.?
_ Henry Scougal (1650-78) was a distinguished Scottish Episcopalian, whose classic Life of Ged in the Soul of Man was first published in 1677. Susanna's brief survey of her reading thus brings together a Scottish Episcopalian, an Italian
Roman Catholic (Scupoli in Castaniza's translation), and an English Puritan, Baxter.
It is interesting that Susanna rates the writings of Richard Baxter so highly. She does not specify any of his works, but her sister Elizabeth knew and loved his Saints' Everlasting
Rest. Timothy Rogers, preaching her funeral sermon, recalled that Elizabeth had found the book congenial reading in her last illness : 'Mr Baxter's Saints' Rest was a book in which she took a great delight; there is a spirit of such seriousness and heavenliness in that book, that all the while one reads, one seems to be in heaven.'* Given the common background of * Clarke, Wesley Family, Il, 103. For John Wesley's similarly eclectic approach, see Christian Library, I, ix (Preface).
* T. Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 129.
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Susanna and her sister, and their similarity in character and piety, it is likely that Susanna knew the Saints' Rest too.
Certainly it chimes in with the spirit of her own devotion, and being written out of Baxter's sickness it would speak to her own condition. It evidently spoke to her son's too, for Wesley published an abridged version of Baxter's classic, together with Scougal's Life of God, in his Christian Library.
All of Susanna's life and activities were undergirded by the means of grace, which included not only the spiritual reading we have surveyed, but also meditation, prayer, selfexamination and Holy Communion.
Her father had preached on the need for 'serious meditation' and besought his congregation to give the 'good things' of their reading
'a little heart-room, bestow second-thoughts upon them, shut the book when you have read a little, and think of it, and it will abide'.1 In the Puritan circles in which Susanna was reared, meditation was a hallmark of all serious piety.
Dr Thomas Manton, a friend of her father, preached from ~Matthew 15: 7-8, on 'How may we cure distractions in holy
' duties?' and argued that one way was to mingle with 'the offices of the common life' what he called 'gracious meditations and short ejaculations'. Moreover, 'frequent solemn meditation' helped to curb distractions in the spiritual life:
'If the understanding were oftener taken up with the things of God, and our thoughts were kept in more frequent exercise, they would the better come to hand... he that hath stocked his heart with holy thoughts will not find carnal musings so rife and frequent.'? Similarly Richard Baxter assumed that 'most serious' and 'affectionate Meditations'® were a normal part of the Christian life.
Puritan piety was earnest, reflective, and systematic, as its emphasis upon meditation suggests. The Puritan coveted the 1 Christian Library, ed. Wesley, XXIV, 4of.
2 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 477.
3 Baxter, The Divine Life (1664), pp. 171, 173. See also Baxter, The Saints'
Everlasting Rest, Practical Works, ed. Orme, XXIII, 310ff.
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tribute paid to Baxter at his funeral :
'In him the Vertues of the Contemplative and Active Life were eminently united.
His time was spent in Communion with God, and in Charity to Men."! Meditation not only refined and strengthened the soul, but led to increased effectiveness in Christian service.
Dr Annesley expounded in his preaching the need for daily meditation, and urged his hearers:
Did you but once a day .
. solemnly place your selves in God's presence ; beg of him the fixing and flowing of your thoughts, that your thoughts might be graciously fix'd, yet as graciously enlarg'd; let the subject matter of them be something Spiritual ; endeavour to fill your heads, and affect your hearts with holy musings, till you come to some resolution, which resolution close with Prayer, and follow with endeavours; O how would this
(even e're you are aware) engage your Souls to love God.?
He went on to show the need to 'methodize' one's meditations, 'to tye your thoughts together, and so fasten them that they may not be lost, that your musing time may not be reckon'd among your lost time.' One way of tying the thoughts together and of preventing meditation from becoming mere day-dreaming, was to follow the practice of keeping a spiritual journal—'the Puritan confessional',? as Professor
Haller aptly calls it. Susanna kept just such a journal, and carefully recorded in it the substance of her meditations and the vows or resolutions which flowed from them. Both she and her sister Elizabeth evidently took most seriously this whole aspect of their father's piety. The Puritan minister who preached Elizabeth's funeral sermon praised her as the exemplar of "The Character of a Good Woman', whose
'first Visit is to Heaven, and she smells of it all the day.
In her Closet she pleases her self with sweet and serious Meditations, and for these she fetches Matter from the Holy
Scriptures ; which she diligently reads, and which she dearly * Wm. Bates, A Funeral-Sermon for... Mr Richard Baxter (1692), p114.
2 A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 19.
*W. Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (1938), p. 97.
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loves above all other Books'.! Susanna's practice was similar, and the high place she assigned to meditation is clear from a letter to John, in which she comments: 'I see nothing in the disposition of your time but what I approve, unless it be that you do not assign enough of it to meditation; which is,
I conceive, incomparably the best means to spiritualize our affections, confirm our judgement, and add strength to our pious resolutions, of any exercise whatever.'?
For Susanna, meditation led naturally into self-examination, and she addressed herself in the second person as she reviewed her thoughts, words and actions in a detailed and clinical scrutiny. A typical noontide meditation runs: 'It is necessary for you, if you would preserve your liberty, and live free from sin, to mortify your appetites, for if they remain in power, restrain them as you will, or can, still some circumstances or seasons will occur, wherein they will betray you, and compel you to act contrary to your better judgement.'* Here again Susanna was the true daughter of her
Puritan father. Dr Annesley's sermons stressed the vital importance of self-examination, and as one recipe for a good conscience he advised his congregation, 'Be serious and frequent in the examination of your heart and life. This is so necessary to the getting & keeping of a right & peaceable
Conscience, that 'tis impossible to have either without it.'
He lamented 'the carelessness of most, that are better acquainted with any thing than themselves', and asked, with all the existential urgency of Puritan preaching, 'Who questions with his own heart, Who am I? What do I? How live I? Is the course I follow good and lawful? Is that which I omit my duty, or not? Is God my friend? Am I his? What hope have I of heaven? Say I die tomorrow, today, this very hour, where is my assurance I shall be saved?'
1T, Rogers, The Character of a Good Woman, p. 13.
2 Quoted by J. Kirk, Mother of the Wesleys, p. 248.
3 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 2o0f.
I4I
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Annesley held that careful self-examination should be made daily, both morning and evening, the Christian viewing the day first in prospect and then in retrospect: 'Every evening ere you sleep, review your carriage in the day, what you have done, or spoke, or thought, that is but so much as indecent (i.e. unbecoming). Whether your hearts have been intent upon religion, and indifferent to the world. Briefly, have special care of two portions of your time, viz. morning and evening, the morning to fore-think what ought to be done, and the evening to examine whether you have done what you ought.'! Susanna's practice was fully in line with her father's teaching, and in one of her meditations she admonished herself, 'Keep the mind in a temper for recollection, and often in the day call it in from outward objects, lest it wander into forbidden paths. Make an examination of your conscience at least three times a day, and omit no opportunity of retirement from the world.'?
This aspect of Puritan piety, centring upon meditation and self-examination, led to an inner dialogue, a communing of the soul with itself and with God. Professor Talon traces the development of Bunyan's vivid dialogue to this hidden source, and comments: "The dialogue-form with questions and answers is a repetition of the inner monologue which is often nothing more than an implicit dialogue.' Yet where
Talon thinks in terms of a 'self-with-self dialogue', P. T.
Forsyth, writing on prayer from within this same tradition of Puritan devotion, suggests a deeper understanding of the dialogue as 'the dialogue of grace' which 'is really the monologue of the divine nature in self-communing
1 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 20f.
2 Headingley MSS, A. f. 31. For the rigorous system of self-examination adopted by Wesley and his associates in the Holy Club, see M. Schmidt, John
Wesley, A Theological Biography, 1, 97ff. Dr Schmidt, significantly, sees the Holy
Club scheme as 'an example of the way in which the Puritan practices of selfcontrol and self-criticism have been intensified and formulated into an extraordinarily exacting oversight of the individual's affairs'.
*H. Talon, John Bunyan, the Man and his Work, p. 128.
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love'. The communion with God which was characterized by such stringent self-examination was one source of the profound psychological insight of the Puritan divines. There is a notable example of this insight in the section of Baxter's
Autohtography entitled by his modern editor Richard Baxter's Self-Analysis and Life-Review.2 A good example of this Puritan insight is the conception of the 'darling sin', which occurs also in Susanna's writings and in John Wesley. Thomas
Doolittle, preaching at Cripplegate in 1661, warned that only when a man was willing to give up 'his bosom sin, his darling' was he truly sincere. Otherwise his Achilles' heel would prove fatal: 'one stab at the heart with a pen-knife, will as certainly kill a man, as a thousand wounds with a sword.' In the same vein Dr Annesley preached, 'Come,
Sirs, let me deal plainly with you; you are shameful strangers to your own heart, if you do not know which is your darling sin, or sins; and you are traitors to your own souls, if you do not endeavour a thorough mortification.'* Susanna, in a letter to John Wesley of 1727, carried the thought further by _ pointing out that it was vain to try to compensate for indulgence of a darling sin by increased rigour in other areas of one's life: "I am verily persuaded, that the reason why so many seek to enter into the kingdom of heaven, but are not able, is, there is some Delilah, some one beloved vice, they
-will not part with ; hoping that by a strict observance of their duty in other things, that particular fault will be dispensed with. But, alas! they miserably deceive themselves
. .'* Hence the need for eternal vigilance and constant self1p. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, p. 42.
2 See Baxter, Autobiography, ed. J. M. Lloyd Thomas, pp. 103ff.
3 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 308f.
4 A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 15. See also John Bunyan, The Heavenly Footman (1698) ; 'In the doctrine of mortification is also much of the cross. Is it nothing for a man to lay hands on his vile opinions, on his vile sins, on his bosom sins, on his beloved, pleasant, darling sins .. .2? (The Works of Fohn Bunyan, ed. G. Offor (1854-55), III, 387.)
5 Clarke, Wesley Family, I, 22.
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* examination. Wesley himself, in one of his translations of hymns from the German, Tersteegen's Verborgne Gottesliebe du, used language which echoes this strain in Puritan moral theology :
_O hide this self from me, that I No more, but Christ in me, may live!
My vile affections crucify, Nor let one darling lust survive!
In all things nothing may I see, Nothing desire or seek, but Thee !?
The means of grace by which Susanna's piety was sustained included not only spiritual reading, prayer and meditation, public worship and private self-scrutiny, but also the sacrament of Holy Communion. It might be thought that at this point Susanna stepped outside the Puritan tradition in which she was reared, with its overwhelming emphasis on the majesty of the preached Word. Such an emphasis, however, in the mainstream of the Puritan tradition, by no means involved a disparagement of the sacrament.
Baxter has a lyrical passage on 'the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ', which combines belief in the Real
Presence with stress upon the sealing of the Covenant between Christ and His Church. The central importance of the Covenant in Puritan theology highlights the significance of Baxter's statement that it is in the sacrament that the Covenant is sealed. The passage, both for its intrinsic merit, and because it brings out a side of Puritan devotion too often neglected, deserves quotation in full. In the sacrament, writes Baxter :
Christ himself with his Covenant-gifts are all delivered to us by these investing signs of his own institution; even as knighthood is given by a sword, and as a house is delivered by a key, or land by a twig and turf. Nowhere is God so near to man as in Jesus
Christ ; and nowhere is Christ so familiarly represented to us, as in this holy sacrament. Here we are called to sit with him at his
* Methodist Hymn Book (1933), Hymn 433, verse 5. My italics.
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Table, as his invited welcome guests; to commemorate his sacrifice, to feed upon his very flesh and blood; that is, with our mouths upon his representative flesh and blood, and with our applying faith upon his real flesh and blood, by such a feeding as belongs to faith. The Marriage-Covenant betwixt God incarnate, and his espoused ones, is there publicly sealed, celebrated and solemnized.
. If ever a believer may on earth expect his kindest entertainment, and near access, and a humble intimacy with his Lord, it is in the participation of this sacrifice-feast, which is called the Communion because it is appointed as well for our special communion with Christ as with one another.
It is here that we have the fullest intimation, expression and communication of the wondrous love of God; and therefore it is here that we have the loudest call, and best assistance to make a large return of love. .
. .} He goes on to warn that there should be no 'rushing upon holy things with a presumptuous careless common frame of heart',—a warning of which Susanna, at least, had no need.
There is evidence that in her sacramental devotion Susanna stood in this high Puritan tradition, which esteemed the Lord's Supper as a sovereign means of grace. We have not to hand any writings of Dr Annesley on the sacrament, but there has survived a graphic account of his celebrating
Holy Communion at his meeting-house in Little St Helen's.
A visitor to the congregation describes the scene:
The Dr went all over the meeting first, to see who was there, then spake something of the Sermon, then read the words of Institution, then prayed and eat and drunk himself, then gave to every one with his own Hand, dropping pertinent Expressions.
In our Pue said—Now our Spikenard should give its smell; and said to me, Remember the Death of Christ
. The Deacon followed the Dr, and when his Cup was empty filled it again: as at our Pue all had drunk but I, he filled the Cup, and then gave it to me; said, as he gave it—Must be ready in new
Obedience, and stick at nothing for Christ.?
The pledge of obedience and self-offering, the sacramentum or oath of allegiance solemnly sworn by the Christian disciple
1 Baxter, The Divine Life, Pt. 1, A Treatise of the Knowledge of God (1664), p. 174f.
2 Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1, 253ff.,.as quoted in Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans, p. 210.
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. who takes the sacrament, is admirably expressed in his injunction to 'stick at nothing for Christ'; and the phrase might well stand as the watchword of his own life, and of Puritanism at its best. Here it serves to underline the fact that the Puritan ideal of Christianity in earnest included a vital attachment to the sacrament as a means of grace.
The solemnity of Holy Communion for the Puritans was marked by their careful preparation for receiving it. Timothy
Rogers, in his sketch of Puritan piety, based on the life of Susanna's sister, Elizabeth, made this preparation a normative element in the 'Good Woman's' devotion:
When there is a sacrament, then she dispatches all her worldly affairs with great haste and expedition; and beginning with elevations of her heart to God, tries her own ways, and examines whether she is sincere, and all her graces are in exercise ; she very wisely trims her lamp, and so is fit to meet the Lord. He only knows with what rapture she longs to see his face, and to feel his love ; she longs to feast with her best beloved, and to have the foretastes of heaven at his holy table.
One of Elizabeth's meditations before receiving the sacrament has been preserved, and is marked by a fervent belief in the Real Presence: 'O dearest Jesus, I cannot at this sacrament take a denial of thy gracious Presence; I come to meet with God, and I cannot be contented without him; I would have all my graces flourish,' I would have all sin destroy'd and rooted out ... I did . .
. in these and the like expressions, make over myself to be more entirely God's ; and I dare own upon review, that I enjoyed Christ.'?
In this same tradition, Susanna carried out a careful selfexamination before she went to the Lord's Table. Indeed, she was so rigorously conscientious that both her body and spirit were fatigued for some days after. She acutely analysed her condition in one of her meditations:
* Rogers, The Character of a Good Woman, p. 37f.
2 Thid., p. 147f.
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You have of late often experienced that the more accurate you have been in the work of preparation for the sacrament, the more indisposed you have been to spiritual things, (especially for meditation, and reflection) for sometimes one, sometimes two, or three days after; and this hath been a great discouragement to you, and you have thought that your soul has received no benefit from that sacred ordinance. Now the reason of it I apprehend to be this—long intense thinking, keeping the mind for a considerable time to hard exercise, does necessarily impair the bodily strength, where persons are of a weak constitution, and that the mind being under the influences of the body in this imperfect state, it cannot exert itself, till that hath again recovered its vigour, which requires some time; and you may observe that as the body is refreshed, the soul is strengthened. Therefore be not discouraged ; but endeavour to keep your mind as composed as possible, and pray to God to preserve you from temptation during this bodily indisposition, and that as your day is, so your strength may be. Amen, Lord Jesus !4
It was from her own experience of the sacrament as a sovereign means of grace that she wrote to her eldest son
Samuel, while he was at Westminster School: 'I am heartily glad that you have already, and that you design again to -receive the Holy Sacrament; for there is nothing more proper or effectual for the strengthening and refreshing the mind, than the frequent partaking of that blessed ordinance."?
The sacrament was again the subject of correspondence between mother and son in 1732, when John consulted
Susanna, as his mentor and mother-confessor, about the views of one of his Oxford friends on the subject of the Real
Presence. Susanna's reply shows that for her the sacrament was no mere memorial of Jesus, but a genuine encounter with Him.
The young gentleman you mention seems to me to be in the right concerning the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament.
1 Headingley MSS, A. f. 54f.; printed in Wesley Banner (1852), IV, 406.
See also Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family, p. 209, for Susanna's similar advice to John.
2 Arminian Magazine (1788), XI, 36, On Susanna's experience of Assurance in the sacrament, see below, p. 197f.
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% I own I never understood by the real presence more than what he has elegantly expressed, that 'the Divine nature of Christ is then eminently present to impart, by the operation of His Holy
Spirit, the benefits of His Death to worthy receivers.' Surely the Divine presence of our Lord, thus applying the virtue and merits of the great Atonement to each true believer makes the consecrated bread more than a sign but with it the thing signified, all the benefits of His Incarnation and Passion; but still, however this Divine institution may seem to others, to me it is full of mystery.} Her approval of doctrine 'elegantly expressed' is a typically eighteenth-century touch, but Susanna goes far beyond the often cold and rationalistic piety of the times in her devotion to the sacrament, as in so much else. Her stress on the operation of the Spirit in the sacrament, often echoed in Charles Wesley's Hymns on the Lord's Supper ; her underlining of the need for 'worthy receiving'; and the characteristic reverence and humility of her last sentence, with its concern to safeguard the mystery ;—all these reveal a depth and warmth of devotion, which, though expressed in the language of the eighteenth century, are much more redolent of that great though wayward age of faith, the seventeenth.
Professor Gerald Cragg's study of the changes in religious thought within the Church of England from 1660 to 1700 is suggestively entitled From Puritanism to the Age of Reason.
The first thirty years of Susanna's life coincided with the last three decades of this period. Did she make any such transition herself? It may well be argued that she did. She was bred in Puritanism, left N onconformity for Anglicanism, and from her own account was influenced during her formative years by the Socinian heresy. Moreover, there are numerous passages in her writings which lend colour to the view that her piety and devotion were markedly rationalistic.
Reason, reasonable, rational,—these words occur as often in her writings as in those of her son John. Her letters,
1 Wesley, Letters, I, 118.
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meditations, and theological treatises all reveal her strong desire to hold a rational faith. More than once, indeed, she identifies natural and revealed religion, and asserts that the Gospel simply results in bringing man again under the rule of right reason. In her 'Conference' with her daughter
Emilia, she writes: 'Do you think our Saviour taught any other than natural religion? If you do you are mistaken.
For true religion, like almighty God, the supreme author and object of it, is but one. Nor is there any essential difference between the religion of Jesus Christ and that of Adam in Paradise. And one reason why deists and free-thinkers contend for natural in opposition to revealed religion is because they do not understand it.' A little later, she sums up her position in this way: 'In a word, our Saviour came, not to teach us a new, but to retrieve the old, natural religion, and to put us again under the conduct of right reason, by the direction and assistance of His Holy Spirit.' To her it is selfevident, when one considers 'the present state of mankind', that 'the system of the Gospel is a most noble and reasonable institution'.?
It must be conceded that the spirit of 'reasonable religion', so beloved of the eighteenth century, has coloured Susanna's thought and language here. Yet we must be careful not to read too much into these passages. Susanna neither diluted the historic faith nor sought to empty it of its central mystery.
In bringing together natural and revealed religion, she was not reducing the revelation in Christ to a few 'truths of reason' and a little dry morality. She was rather contending that natural religion, rightly understood, made just as searching demands on men as did revealed; but that with the revelation in Christ grace was made available to meet them.
'The rules of right reason are as severe as the precepts of the Gospel, being in truth all one... (and) .
. it would be impossible for man, in his present condition, to live according 1 W.H.S. Pubns., No. 3, p. 36f.
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* to those rules, had it not pleased God, by revelation, to put him in the way, and to promise him the assistance of His
Holy Spirit that he may be able to do it."?
It would be easy to assume that this strongly rational element in Susanna's piety was a deviation from the Puritanism in which she had been reared; easy, but misleading.
The truth is, of course, that there was a distinct emphasis on the rational element in religion in the classical Puritan | tradition itself. Richard Baxter was on occasion moved to tears in the pulpit, but he was no emotional ranter. His sermons, like those of John Wesley, made a carefully reasoned appeal to the hearer. In The Reformed Pastor, Baxter urges his fellow-ministers, 'We have reasonable creatures to deal with; and as they abuse their reason against truth, so they will accept better reason for it before they will obey. We must therefore see that our sermons be convincing, and that we make the light of Scripture and reason shine so bright in the faces of the ungodly, that it may even force them to see, unless they wilfully shut their eyes.'2 The combination of Scripture and reason, so characteristic of Wesley too, is significant, and should make us wary of dismissing Puritan preaching as an anti-rational appeal to the emotions. In Baxter's view, sinners were to be converted, not by being swamped under a wave of feeling, but by being convinced of the overwhelming rationality and cogency of the Christian message: "The great things which we have to commend to our hearers, have reason enough on their side, and lie plain before them in the Word of God; we should therefore be so furnished with all store of evidence, as to come as with a torrent upon their understandings, and bear down all before us, and with our dilemmas and expostulations to bring them to a nonplus, and pour out shame upon all their vain objections, that they may be forced to yield to the power
1 W.H.S. Pubns., No. 3, p. 36.
* Baxter, Practical Works, ed. Orme, XIV, 226.
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of Truth and see that it is great, and will prevail.'! The appeal was to the mind and will, rather than to the emotions.
Dealing with ministerial teaching, on another occasion, Baxter asserts that a good minister will teach each of his people three basic truths: the knowledge of himself as 'A Rational free agent'; the knowledge of God as Creator and Ruler; and the knowledge that there is a life to come. He adds that the minister, in delivering these truths, 'needeth no supernatural proof of what he saith; but can prove it all to you from the light of nature.' These truths, however, only become savingly effective when they are known by 'supernatural grace' as well as by natural reason. "These things .. . are (usually) at first apprehended by natural reason, not so as presently to put or prove the soul in a state of saving grace ; but so as to awaken it to make further inquiry; and so when the soul is come so far as to see the same truths by supernatural Grace in the supernatural revelation of the Holy
Scriptures, then they become more effectual and saving, which before were known but preparatorily : and so the same truths are then both the objects of knowledge and of faith.'?
In assigning a high place to human reason, Baxter was not being disloyal to the Puritan tradition, though he is careful to qualify his exaltation of reason by stressing the need for revelation and saving grace.
Susanna's position is very similar. She thinks it selfevident that the existence of God is a truth apparent to any rational person: 'What creature under heaven, that has the use of reason, can be ignorant of the Being of God, and that they ought to live in subjection to him from whom they receive their own being?'? Yet such a knowledge is not saving knowledge, which can come only through "a lively
1Tbid., loc. cit. See also Wm. Bates, A Funeral-Sermon for ..
. Mr Richard Baxter (1692), p. go.
2 Baxter, A Christian Directory, Pt.AIl (1673), p. 719.
3 Headingley MSS, A. f. 33.
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faith in God's mercy through Christ'.1 Here we are at the heart of Susanna's piety. Her theology and devotion are
Christocentric, and have a personal warmth and ardour a world removed from the often cold or tepid faith of the Deist or Latitudinarian. Her devotion to the person of Christ comes out strongly in her exposition of the Creed, where under the head of 'The Life Everlasting' she asks, "Who that has the lowest degree of faith would not part with all things in this world to obtain that love to our Blessed Redeemer, which we so long for, and sigh after?' 'The same warmth of piety is evident in the way Susanna sometimes ends a meditation with a spontaneous ejaculation of praise, with a 'Glory be to thee, O Lord!' or a 'Glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Joint Authors of man's salvation !'*
Her emphasis upon reason is counterbalanced in three further ways. She sets careful bounds to the scope of reason; she maintains a profound sense of awe before the mystery of God's nature, will and purposes; and she stresses the illuminating and strengthening grace of the Holy Spirit. In all three respects her theology aligns her with, rather than detaching her from, the Puritan theological tradition. Susanna sets great store by reason, and yet for her its sovereignty is far from absolute. Its sway is that of a constitutional monarch hedged about by checks and balances, rather than a despot invested with Divine Right. Natural reason can convey to a man the truth that God is, and can shed a good deal of light on his duty to God and neighbour; but it can neither show him how human nature became corrupted nor how it has been redeemed. Introducing her exposition of the Creed
(1710), Susanna argues that though 'that understanding and reason which is natural to all men', can know something of God's nature, 'yet, considering the present state of mankind,
1 Headingley MSS, A. f. 50.
* Headingley MSS, C. f. 57.
* Headingley MSS, A. ff. 45, 58.
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it was absolutely necessary that we should have some revelation from God to make known to us those truths upon the knowledge of which our salvation depends, and which unassisted reason could never have discovered', because man's
'understanding, will, and affections are extremely corrupted and depraved'.1 Twenty-five years later, she writes in the same vein, in a letter to John: 'Would not some mention of the necessity of revealed religion be proper here? since, without it, all the wit of man could never have found out how human nature was corrupted at its fountain; neither had it been possible for us to have discovered any way or means whereby it might have been restored to its primitive purity.'?
Other saving truths which for Susanna are beyond the reach of unaided natural reason include: the Incarnation, the Atonement, the immortality of the soul, the Last Judgement, the Trinity, and the mystery of divine providence.
Expounding the Creed, she declares: "The infinite condescension of the eternal Son of God in assuming our nature was mysterious and incomprehensible, surpassing the wit of men or angels to conceive how such a thing might be.'* On the Crucifixion, she reflects that, "Though stupid man could insensibly look on this mysterious passion of his blessed
Redeemer, yet nature could not so behold her dying Lord, but by strong commotions expressed her sympathy.'4 In the preliminary groundwork of her credal statement, she explains to her daughter Sukey that we could not have had 'any certainty of a future state, of the being of spirits, of the immortality of the soul, or of a judgement to come'.® In arguing against Aristotle's teaching that the world is eternal, she concludes: "This error seems grounded on a true notion of the eternal, infinite Goodness of God, which he truly
1 Headingley MSS, C. ff. 13-14.
2 Clarke, Wesley Family, I, 28.
® Headingley MSS, C. f. 32; and see also Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 29.
4 Headingley MSS, C. f. 41.
5 Headingley MSS, C. f14.
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z . supposes must eternally be communicating good to something or other, and it was his want of the knowledge of Revealed Religion that probably led him into it. For had he ever heard of that great article of our Christian Faith concerning the Holy Trinity, he had then perceived the Almighty Goodness eternally communicating Being and all the fulness of the Godhead to the Divine Logos, his uncreated
Word."? Finally, in one of her daily meditations, her brooding on the mystery of God's providence leads her to an acknowledgement akin to the concluding lines of Isaac Watts' great hymn to the Holy Trinity:
Where reason fails, with all her powers, There faith prevails, and love adores.
Susanna bids herself bow down before the fathomless wisdom of God: 'If you are now more rationally persuaded that God is infinitely wise, then learn by this knowledge, to practise a more hearty and universal subjection to him, more cheerfully submit to the order of his Providence.
Submit your reason so far to your faith, as not to doubt or scruple those points of faith which are mysterious to us through the weakness of our understanding, and adore the mystery you cannot comprehend.'?
The counterpart of the limitation of human reason in the matter of salvation, is seen in Susanna's consistent emphasis on the need for the assisting and illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit. She draws a clear distinction, for example, between knowing that God exists and is omnipotent, and a personal knowledge of Him as Saviour. To realize from Nature that there is an Almighty Creator is only 'to know
God as a man, as a reasonable creature; but this is not that knowledge that leadeth us to eternal life'. She develops the contrast between abstract, theoretical knowledge of God, and that which is personal and experimental :
1 Headingley MSS, A. f. 23.
2 Headingley MSS, A. f. 61.
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the one we attain in a scientifical method, by a long train of arguments, for which the bulk of mankind want either capacity or leisure ; the other, by frequent and fervent application to God in prayer. The one is an effect of human reason assisted by human learning, peculiar to a few of more noble and refined sense ; God perceived, known to the understanding as the creator, preserver and governor of the universe. The other is reason acting by the influence and direction of the Holy Spirit; God known to the heart, the will and its affections, not merely as the author of our being, but as he is exhibited to us under the character of a healer, a repairer of the lapse and misery of human nature, a Saviour, him whom our soul loveth.
Later the same day, she returns to the theme, and in language which is reminiscent of Pascal's strictures on 'the God of the philosophers', meditates: "To know God only as a philosopher ; to have the most sublime and curious speculations concerning his essence, his attributes, his providence
. will avail us nothing, unless at the same time we know him experimentally; unless the heart perceive and know him to be her supreme good, her only happiness; unless the soul feel and acknowledge that she can find no repose, no peace, no joy, but in loving and being beloved by him."?
The centrality of the Spirit's work, and the warmth and vitality of Susanna's piety, which this passage exemplifies, are entirely typical.
For Susanna, indeed, the Christian life from first to last is life in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. "The first operation of the Holy Spirit in conversion is light to discern his state; the medium of which light is usually something extraordinary, either of judgement or mercy,'—a glance at the doctrine of special providences, so dear to the Puritans.
By this illuminating grace of the Spirit, a man glimpses his own sinfulness and God's goodness, and is filled with 'regret and shame'. She concludes her meditation: "This may be called a state of illumination, a good preparation, or disposition, for repentance. It is repentance in embryo.'?
1 Headingley MSS, B. ff. 6-8.
2 Wesley Banner (1852), IV, 203.
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* Elsewhere, she speaks of the refining power of the Spirit as, 'purifying your mind, exalting your nature to the dignity of a Divine resemblance, teaching you to undervalue, nay, despise the perishing enjoyments of what a mistaken world calls good, as unnecessary, or rather a hindrance to your spiritual and eternal good, which you will then prize above all others."?
These quotations are typical, and it would be tedious to multiply them; but it is important to ask what they signify.
What lies behind Susanna's stress on the severe limitations of reason, her warnings against abstract theologizing and a merely speculative knowledge of God? Why does she insist that, 'in the present state of human nature, no man can qualify himself for heaven without the Holy Spirit, which is given by God incarnate?'? May we not seek the clue to an answer in the spiritual crisis through which she had passed as an adolescent, in which speculative reason had led her away from the historic Faith into a passing involvement with Unitarianism? In one of her meditations, she records the benefits which had marked her early life:
Born in a Christian country; early initiated and instructed in the first principles of the Christian religion; good example in parents, and in several of the family; good books and ingenious conversation; preserved from ill accidents, once from. violent death ; married to a religious, orthodox man; by him first drawn off from the Socinian DEVESY and afterwards confirmed and strengthened by B.B.
Adam Clarke suggests that 'B.B.
> refers to Bishop Bull, who in 1685, when Susanna was a girl of fifteen, published an influential defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, in his
Defensio Fidet Nicaenae, as a reply to opponents who had charged him with being a Socinian.* If the orthodox in- * Wesley Banner (1852), IV, 202. See also, on this same theme of the Holy
Spirit in the Christian life, Headingley MSS, A. ff. 28, gof., 58.
* Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 28, See also ibid., II, 6sf.
8 Tbid., II, 88.
: George Bull (1634-1710) became Rector of Suddington, near Cirencester, in 1685, and Bishop of St David's in 1705.
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fluence which Samuel Wesley brought to bear on Susanna antedates, as seems probable, their marriage in 1689, Bishop
Bull's work would qualify chronologically for the identification which Clarke suggests.
Whatever influences led her to return to orthodoxy, however, Susanna's altered belief was not only a change of heart. It was also emphatically a change of mind, which involved her in hard thinking and the disciplined use of reason. Henceforth for her reason and religion would be as closely conjoined as they were to become for her son John.
If reason was the junior partner of the two, it was certainly not a sleeping one. Yet we may fittingly conclude this survey of Susanna's theology and devotion by citing a few passages from her writings which show clearly that the strongly rational element in her piety never ousted her profound sense of awe at the mystery of the Godhead. She reflects on the mystery of redemption: 'Consider the infinite, boundless goodness of the ever-blessed Trinity; adore the stupendous mystery of divine love! That God the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, should all concur in the work of man's redemption!
What but pure goodness could move, or excite God, who is perfect essential blessedness ; that cannot possibly receive any accession of perfection or happiness from his creatures?
What, I say, but love, but goodness, but infinite, incomprehensible love and goodness, could move him to provide such a remedy for the fatal lapse of his sinful unworthy creatures?'!
Again, in her exposition of the Creed, the final clause ('And the life everlasting'), leads her to a great climax of praise and adoration:
How shall we blush to behold that exceeding and eternal weight of glory, that is conferred upon us for that little, or rather nothing, which we have done or suffered for our Lord! That God who gave us being, that preserved us, that fed and clothed us in our passage through the world; and, what is infinitely more, that gave his only Son to die for us; and has by his grace purified and 1 Wesley Banner (1852), 1V, 405-6.
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conducted us safe to his glory. Oh, blessed grace! mysterious love! how shall we then adore and praise what we cannot here apprehend aright! How will love and joy work in the soul! But I cannot express it, I cannot conceive it... .4
Such reticent wonder was of the essence of the Puritan's 'serious godliness'.
» Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 71.