Methodist Matriarch
CHAPTER SEVEN
Methodist Matriarch The true founder of the Methodists was Mrs Wesley.
Julia Wedgwood The Wesleys' mother was the mother of Methodism in a religious and moral sense.
Isaac Taylor 1; is no mere genealogical figure of speech to describe Susanna as the mother of Methodism, as if simply to underline the obvious fact that John and Charles Wesley, as her sons, were greatly indebted to her in respect of both character and training. If that were all, it would be more accurate, though pedantic, to speak of her as the grandmother of Methodism. Yet mother is correct, for in a real sense 1t was she who founded Methodism in Epworth rectory, where we may see in germ the Methodist pattera of discipline and pastoral oversight, with their careful framework of rules for Christian living. Susanna sponsored Methodism not only through her sons, but also in them.
It is significant that more than a little of the doctrine, ethos and polity of the early Methodist societies was foreshadowed in Mrs Wesley's household. She was herself the 185,
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embodiment of the 'serious godliness' which had characterized the Puritans, and which Methodism was in turn to breed in its people. Several of the leading emphases of Methodist theology may be discerned in her devotion and its richly varied background. Dr Martin Schmidt, in his notable
'theological biography' of John Wesley, gives an impressive synopsis of the Christian heritage into which he was born, and describes the home at Epworth as one in which there were brought together, the heritage of Puritanism, Anglican churchmanship, and that concern for the care of souls, social activity and missionary zeal, derived from the revival of the Religious Societies. At the same time it drew its sustenance from Puritan culture of family life and from the nurture of individual souls found in Romanic mysticism.
To this was joined the influence of the Halle type of pietism.
Finally a place was given to liberal scholarship, and the harmonious, mystical piety of a Henry Scougal was held in high esteem. To all this was added Susanna Wesley's personal gift as a teacher. Although this was charismatic in the deepest sense of the word, it was nevertheless most methodically cultivated and practised. Through this rich polyphony one leading theme resounds like a cantus firmus: it is that of the love of God which empowers man towards perfection. It might almost be said that here, in the cradle, the main content of John Wesley's thought was already being proclaimed.} Dr Schmidt's passage brings out several points which have already emerged in this present study : the central importance of Susanna in the transmission of this 'theological heritage ; the profound influence of the Puritan tradition, stemming from Dr Annesley, personified in Susanna, and formatively at work in John Wesley ; and the dominant theological motif of 'the love of God which empowers man towards perfection'.
All these points need to be amplified, and might well serve as text for this chapter.
If we attempt to trace Susanna's influence on the later doctrinal formulations of Methodism, we may appropriately
*M. Schmidt, John Wesley, A Theological Biography, I, 63.
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begin with an examination of the 'grand depositum', the doctrine which Wesley regarded as Methodism's peculiar trust, that of Christian Perfection. Describing the manifold sources of Wesley's teaching, John L. Peters writes: 'Wesley brought the contributions not only of Taylor, Law and a Kempis, but also of Clement of Alexandria, Plotinus,
Augustine, Tauler, the Cambridge Platonists, Molinos, Antoinette Bourignon, Madame Guyon, Macarius the Egyptian, Francois de Sales, Juan de Castaniza, Fénelon, and Pascal. From among these writers representing as they do the mystical tradition of the Church, it is obvious that Wesley
© was most influenced by the practical type.'? Dr Colin Williams, in his lucid study John Wesley's Theology Today, endorses this analysis, calls attention to the further influence of the Apostolic Fathers on Wesley's teaching, and underlines J. S. Simon's insight into the importance of the quest for holiness in the Religious Societies of eighteenth-century
England.? Dr Williams makes, however, no reference to the 'importance of the theme of Christian Perfection in the Puritan tradition to which Wesley stood heir.* Yet we can trace this motif, in the writings of Susanna's father, in the Puritan divines whom she herself read, in her own meditations and treatises, and in the impressive series of Puritan classics which Wesley edited for his Christian Library.
The theme of Christian Perfection, as understood in the Puritan tradition, requires a rather fuller quotation from the significant passage in one of Dr Annesley's sermons which defines 'serious Christianity' as comprising essentially 'Christ and Holiness'. The sermon inevitably challenges comparison with Wesley's own understanding of Christian Perfection in 1 Wesley, Letters, VIII, 238.
2 J. L. Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (1956), p. 20.
3C. W. Williams, John Wesley's Theology Today (1960), p. 173.
4 The index of John Wesley's Theology Today, though the work treats its subject in historical depth as well as in contemporary significance, contains not a single reference to the Puritans.
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terms of 'sanctification by faith', for it firmly eschews all idea of merit and sees Christian goodness as issuing fundamentally from faith in Christ. Annesley urged his congregation to Remember these two words, though you forget all the rest of the Sermon, viz., 'CHRIST and Holiness, Holiness and CHRIST?' interweave these all manner of ways, in your whole conversation
. Press after holiness as much as is possible, had you no CHRIST to befriend you; (for it is a shame to mind holiness the less, for any benefits you expect from CHRIST;) and rest as entirely upon CHRIST, as if there were nothing else required :
(for the best of your holiness doth not merit acceptance).* He went on to sum up the meaning of Christianity as essentially 'faith working by love', and to call for 'a holy faith, full of good works', quite in John Wesley's style.
Dr Annesley's sermon subjects are often illuminating in their bearing on this theme of Christian Perfection. He preached on Acts 24:16, 'And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God; and toward men', in an attempt to resolve the question, 'How may we be universally and exactly conscientious??? On another occasion, he expounded Matthew 22:37-8, and addressed himself to another practical 'case of conscience' :
'How may we attain to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds?' He described the Christian's heart as completely on fire with the love of God: 'When the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, 'tis as the breaking of a Ball of lightning, it sets all on a flame immediately. It is the unspeakable enlargement of the heart towards God; the highest
Rhetorick is too flat to express it, as is obvious in that Song of Songs, that Song of loves.'* In sermons such as these, we are close to Wesley's understanding of entire sanctification as a life transformed by an all-pervading love to God and man.
In his sermon on loving God with all one's powers, Dr 1 Christian Library, ed. Wesley, XXIV, 453ff.; and see above, p. 40.
® The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 1.
8 A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 3.
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Annesley expounded in detail 'What it is to love God with the whole heart,' and stressed that 'perfect Hatred and perfect Love knows no such thing as the world calls Prudence'. He continued by defining carefully what this total love to God involved: 'Some expound this totality by this distinction: we are to love God with the whole heart positively and negatively : positively, where all powers of the will are set to love God, and this we cannot perfectly do while we are travellers, till we come to our heavenly country; but negatively, thou shalt so love God, that nothing contrary to the love of God shall be entertained in thy heart; and this we may attain to a pretty tolerable perfection of in this life.'
'A pretty tolerable perfection in this life' is hardly the language of exact theological definition, but it does suggest a real affinity with Wesley's teaching. The likeness of this whole exposition to Wesley's doctrine is quite striking : perfection is interpreted essentially in terms of love to God; it is a modified perfection, suitable to the Christian in his earthly pilgrimage and not fully anticipating the life of heaven; and _ it consists in a sincerity of heart which does not entertain any impulse contrary to the love of God.
Annesley gave both warning and encouragement to his hearers, by urging that the supreme commandment of entire love to God, 'includes the highest perfection possibly attainable in this life; yet let not this difficulty fright you, for through Christ our sincere love (though weak) is accepted ; and our imperfect love (because growing) shall not be despised.'? It is instructive to compare these extracts from a Puritan sermon of his grandfather with Wesley's own definitive expression of his teaching in A Plain Account of Christian
Perfection, where he catechizes himself in the following terms:
Question. What is Christian Perfection?
Answer. The loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and 1 4 Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 5.
2 Tbid., p. 11.
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¥ strength. This implies, that no wrong temper, none contrary to love, remains in the soul; and that all the thoughts, words, and actions, are governed by pure love.?
Both Annesley and Wesley are agreed that man's love to God is itself a gift of the Spirit. Annesley points out that 'Our love to God is nothing else but the echo of God's love to us', and after appealing to Aquinas and De Sales, concludes: ' 'Tis the Lord alone that can direct our hearts into the love of God.'? Like Wesley, Annesley is careful to qualify the 'perfect love' to which the Christian is called, by a recognition that it can and does co-exist with certain 'unavoidable infirmities'. To one who doubts whether he truly loves God, the Puritan pastor counsels, 'Keep a severe watch against all sins; yet give not way to drooping fears, because of unavoidable infirmities,' and quotes Psalm 130 :3-4, 'If thou,
Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?'
Dr Annesley's earnest emphasis upon Christian Perfection was not lost upon his children. According to Timothy Régers, part of the dying prayer of Susanna's sister, Elizabeth, was that God would not only pardon her sins, but 'perfect holiness' in her.? Susanna herself, in a letter to John Wesley written in 1725, addressed herself to this same theme, in phrasing which is reminiscent of Wesley's developed teaching :
"And when, by the grace of God's Holy Spirit, we are so far conquerors, as that we never willingly offend, but still press after greater degrees of Christian perfection, sincerely endeavouring to plant each virtue in our minds, that may through Christ render us pleasing to God; we shall then experience the truth of Solomon's assertion, "The ways of virtue are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."' '4 Susanna's language may lack some of the warmth of her father's and son's formulations of the call to perfection,
+ Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Works, XI, 394).
* A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 12.
* T. Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 159.
* Clarke, Wesley Family, U1, 18.
Igo
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but there is no mistaking the same earnestness and zeal. She does not speak of the heart aflame with love to God, as they do; and her call to 'plant each virtue in our minds' sounds a trifle studied and intellectual as a description of the pugna spiritualis of the would-be saint. Nevertheless, the doctrinal affiliations with John's later teaching are notable. They include: a stress upon the 'grace of God's Holy Spirit ;' the safeguard against any doctrine of merit contained in the statement that it is only 'through Christ' that our virtues can 'render us pleasing to God' ; the description of Christians as 'conquerors' of sin; the content of this state of Christian maturity as one in which we 'never willingly offend'; and the open-ended nature of 'perfection' in this life, in which we 'still press after greater degrees of Christian perfection'.
We may also trace a certain continuity between the Puritan tradition as expressed in Susanna's life and character, and later Methodist teaching, in the area of doctrine denoted by 'Assurance' or the witness of the Holy Spirit.
'According to this doctrine, based largely on Romans, _ Chapter 8, the believer may be assured that he enjoys peace with God and that his sins are forgiven. There is a brief reference to Puritan teaching on this head in Dr Arthur
Yates' The Doctrine of Assurance,1 though the book refers specifically only to the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith and the writings of John Owen. A much more systematic and complete exposition of Puritan thought on the witness of the Spirit is given by Dr G. F. Nuttall in his
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (1946). For our present purpose it will be helpful to supplement these writings by drawing on the works of the Puritan divines of Dr Annesley's circle, and by examining Annesley's own teaching and experience.
One of Annesley's co-preachers at the Morning Exercise, 1A. S. Yates, The Doctrine of Assurance, with special reference to Fohn Wesley
(1952), Pp. 172.
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Thomas Doolittle, gave a detailed treatment of Assurance in his sermon on 1 John 5:13, 'These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life." He put the 'case of conscience' he had set himself to resolve in the form of the query, 'If we must aim at Assurance, what should they do, that are not able to discern their own spiritual condition?'
He first set out his major proposition, "That a believer without extraordinary revelation, might certainly know that he hath justifying faith, and unfeigned love to Christ, and that he is upright and sincere with God.'! Such knowledge derived basically from the Christian's awareness of the presence of the Spirit in his heart and life: 'A believer may know that he shall be saved, because he may know that he hath the Spirit of God dwelling in him. The in-dwelling of the Spirit is proper and peculiar to believers; for the world cannot receive him... That they have the Spirit, they may know by the special effects which he produceth in that heart where he dwells; by his convincing, humbling, sanctifying work . . . by his special assistance vouchsafed to them in holy prayer ... by enabling them to mortify their sins more and more.' To help bring peace to troubled consciences, Doolittle gave a detailed series of "Directions to get assurance', of which the first was to have recourse to Scripture: 'Get some characteristical distinguishing signs of'true saving grace, by thy serious searching the word of God.' He then counselled self-examination, and a testing of one's state of soul by the touchstone of Scripture: 'Set thy conscience on work, and reflect upon thy own heart, and upon the motions of thy will, and compare thy self with the word of God.' The next direction was a call to prayer, to 'pray importunately for the witness of the Spirit of God'. He then entered a caveat which Wesley endorsed in his sermons on the witness of the Spirit, namely that ? The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 308.
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The Spirit never witnesseth any thing to any man contrary to what is revealed in the Word, for he is a Spirit of Truth, and never speaks contradictions; therefore if any man thinketh that he hath the witness of the Spirit, testifying that he is a child of God, and yet is not holy, humble, penitent, he is deceived; but | if thou hast the graces of the Spirit, and the Spirit witnesseth so much unto thy conscience, then all is well. The remaining directions were concerned to stimulate growth in grace ('Press after the highest degrees of grace . . ."), and to stress the vital importance of Christian fellowship in this whole process ('Prize the society of the people of God, that are acquainted with the workings of God's Spirit upon their hearts .
. .").1
This appeal to experience in religion was of course common to both Puritanism and Methodism; but lest 'experience' should seem to put a premium on the emotional delights of religion, Doolittle added a final word of warning :
Always be more observant of the purpose and disposition of thy - heart, the inclination of thy will, the general scope of thy life, than the passionate sense of joy and comfort...
There is but little constancy in these joys, like the tide, they ebb and flow.
. Joys are the sweetmeats of the soul, but are not for its constant fare and diet; for a spiritual banquet, not for a standing-dish.* Similarly Richard Baxter deprecates the interpretation of the Spirit's witness in terms of mere personal feelings. Indeed this grossly subjective approach had for a long time prevented his realizing the vital necessity of the doctrine. In a very interesting section of his autobiography he sets out the cardinal importance for faith and practice of the witness of the Spirit in the life of the believer :
I am now, therefore, much more apprehensive than heretofore of the necessity of well grounding men in their religion, and especially of the witness of the indwelling Spirit; for I more
1 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, pp. 313, 318-19.
2 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 321.
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sensibly perceive that the Spirit is the great witness of Christ and Christianity to the world. And though the folly of fanatics tempted me long to overlook the strength of this testimony of the Spirit, while they placed it in a certain internal assertion or enthusiastic inspiration, yet now I see that the Holy Ghost in another manner is the witness of Christ and his agent in the world. The Spirit in the prophets was his first witness; and the Spirit by miracles was the second ; and the Spirit by renovation, sanctification, illumination and consolation, assimilating the soul to Christ and heaven, is the continued witness to all true believers.
And if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his.?
It is clear from these extracts that the Puritan preachers of Dr Annesley's circle did not mean by assurance the private inner feelings of the individual. That would have been to leave the door wide open to enthusiasm (in the pejorative sense), hypocrisy, and Antinomianism. These writers make plain that there are objective criteria which the Christian must use to test his own estimate of his spiritual condition : the guiding light of Scripture, the counsel and advice of fellow-Christians, and the moral content of his life and character, which, if he were sincere, would bear the marks of Christ's grace and goodness.
This same distinction between true and false assurance was brought out by Daniel Williams, another friend of Annesley, in a controversial work written against the views of Dr Tobias Crisp, Gospel Truth Stated and Vindicated.
Williams denounced Crisp's view that 'Assurance is not attained by the evidence of Scripture-marks or signs of grace, or by the Spirit's discovering to us that he hath wrought in our hearts any holy qualifications; but assurance comes only by an inward voice of the Spirit, saying, Thy sins are for given thee, and our believing thereupon that our sins are
* Baxter, Autobiography, ed. Lloyd Thomas, p. 110. See also Thomas Brookes, Heaven on Earth, a Treatise on Christian Assurance (1654), reprinted 1961 by The Banner of Truth Trust; and Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (Practical Works, ed. Orme XXII, 491ff).
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forgiven'. In opposition to such teaching, which clearly put a premium on self-delusion, Williams expounded the classic Puritan doctrine of assurance, in terms which Wesley would readily have accepted :
The ordinary way whereby a man attaineth a well-grounded assurance, is not by immediate objective revelation ; or an inward voice saying, Thy sins are forgiven thee. But when the believer is examining his heart and life by the Word, the holy Spirit enlightens the mind there to discern faith, and love, and such other qualifications which the gospel declareth to be infallible signs of regeneration ; and he adds such power to the testimony of conscience, for the truth and in-being of these graces, as begets in the soul a joyful sense of its reconciled state."
Assurance was indeed an inner conviction of rightness with God, but to be real and valid it must be according to the evidence of Scripture and of conduct. This struggle against the Antinomians was the same one that engaged John
Wesley later; and he might well have echoed Williams's words on his opponents, 'With these we are legal preachers,
'if we urge faith and repentance in order to pardon, though we declare that faith and repentance are the gifts of Christ.'
Of these Puritan authors, Richard Baxter comes nearest to relating the doctrine of assurance to his own Christian life.
For Susanna's father, however, assurance of a quiet and unspectacular kind was quite central to his experience for much of his adult life. Daniel Williams's funeral sermon for Annesley recalled that He had uninterrupted peace and assurance of God's covenantlove for above 30 years last past. It's true, he walked in darkness for several years before that, which is common to those who are converted in childhood, their change not being remarkable, and 1D, Williams, Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated (1692), p. 161. This work was published by Annesley's son-in-law, John Dunton, and contains a commendatory preface signed by a number of ministers who were friends and fellow-workers of Annesley, including William Bates, Vincent Alsop, Richard
Mayo, Richard Stretton, John Howe, and Thomas Kentish.
2 Williams, GospelTruth, p. 160.
3 Thid., p. 249.
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so apter to be questioned ; and they oft make up, in a long time, by frequent returns, the sad hours that others have pressing in at once. But God had a further design, viz. the fitting and inclining him to relieve wounded consciences by his ministry and discourse, wherein he was so eminent, that most troubled souls resorted to him. He used to say, that this made him unable to preach a sermon without some word to them.'
We have confirmation of Williams's account from Susanna herself. On Monday, 3rd September 1739, shortly after a turning-point in her own spiritual life, she was discussing with John the subject of assurance of the forgiveness of sins.
She confessed that, until two or three weeks before, she had been a stranger both to the doctrine and the experience. John then asked her 'whether her father had not the same faith ; and whether she had not heard him preach it to others. She answered he had it himself; and declared, a little before his death, that for more than forty years he had no darkness, no fear, no doubt at all of his being 'accepted in the Beloved'.
But that, nevertheless, she did not remember to have heard him preach—no, not once—explicitly upon it; whence she supposed he also looked upon it as the peculiar blessing of a few, not as promised to all the peopie of God'.? This account is consistent both with her father's published sermons, which do not treat explicitly of this matter, and with Williams's account of his intense pastoral concern for 'troubled souls'.
It seems likely that he would not publicize his own experience of confident assurance, lest those not granted it should be discouraged, or think it an indispensable token of the true believer. Further corroboration of Dr Annesley's experience comes from his daughter Elizabeth, who after her father's death, exclaimed, 'Oh what a comfort is it to us that he enjoyed such an uninterrupted assurance of heaven, and that * Williams, The Excellency of a Publick Spirit, p. 145. The pastoral concern of Annesley for 'wounded consciences' is typical of the best Puritan preachers, for whom Theology and the Cure of Souls—to use the title of Dr Frederic Greeves's suggestive study—were intimately related.
2 Wesley, Journal, II, 267f.
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resignation of himself to the divine will, which is enough to make all that have been about him in love with the ways of God, and may afford us comfort under our great loss.'?
This aspect of Puritan teaching seems by her own account to have been lost on Susanna; yet the outstanding example of her father's assurance must have formed a constant element in her spiritual background. John's questioning of his mother as to 'whether her father had not the same faith', suggests that he too knew something of his grandfather's experience, or that he assumed such teaching to be integral to the Puritan tradition in which Annesley stood.? Of course,
Wesley would have gone further than Annesley in his statement of the doctrine, for he emphatically believed, at this time, that a personal assurance of forgiveness was 'promised to all the people of God',—though he modified this view in later life. To transpose Doolittle's metaphor, Wesley held that this grace of assurance was intended to serve Christians, not "for a spiritual banquet', 'but 'for a standing-dish'. At this point Susanna's Puritanism seems to have become somewhat diluted. In becoming a Methodist, she was to make a break-through to assurance, and to recapture the sort of joy in the Christian life which her father had known.
Wesley's Journal contains a memorable account of what happened to his mother. On Monday, 3rd September 17309, he recorded :
I talked largely with my mother, who told me that, till a short time since, she had scarce heard such a thing mentioned as the having forgiveness of sins now, or God's Spirit bearing witness with our spirit; much less did she imagine that this was the common privilege of all true believers. 'Therefore,' said she,
'I never durst ask for it myself. But two or three weeks ago, while my son Hall was pronouncing those words, in delivering the cup to me, "The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was
1 Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 166.
2 John and his mother had discussed assurance by letter as early as 1725.
See Wesley, Works, XII, 8f., and_J. S. Simon, <John Wesley and the Religious Societies (1921), p. 8rf.
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given for thee," the words struck through my heart, and I knew God for Christ's sake had forgiven me all my sins'.*
When three years later Charles Wesley composed his mother's epitaph, he enshrined this moment in some lines which might well have been taken from one of his "Hymns on the Lord's Supper' :
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.
Being Charles, however, and the son of his father, his innate tendency to extremism would not allow him to stop there.
He must go on to write a couplet which blandly dismissed his mother's seventy years of life as lived under the law, not under grace. With a quite grotesque bigotry, he described her as having 'mourned a long night of grief and fears, a legal night of seventy years'! This view may have accorded well with Charles's rigid and at times rather inhuman scheme of salvation, but it did scant justice to the fact that it was in this 'legal night' that he had himself first seen the light of the gospel, and been grounded by his mother in Christian truth and love.
If we reject Charles's version of this phase of his mother's spiritual life, how are we to interpret it? It would seem that here she had lost, or grown away from, her Puritan heritage in a measure, though Dr Annesley's reticence on the subject should be noted. Yet the doctrine and experience of assurance were certainly known among the Puritans, and her father's colleague, Thomas Doolittle, in one of his sermons strikingly anticipates Susanna's experience at the sacrament. He pointed to Holy Communion asa divinely-appointed means by which believers might receive assurance of their pardon, and asked each member of the congregation:
* Wesley, Journal, II, 267. Her 'son Hall' was Westley Hall, an Anglican clergyman married to her daughter, Martha.
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Art thou not too much guilty of hypocrisy, when thou goest to the table of the Lord, and yet dost not give diligence to make thy calling and election sure ; nor to have the certain knowledge of the pardon of thy sin, and of thy peace with God? Is not the Lord's supper an ordinance for the helping the right receivers to assurance of the pardon of their sin, in the blood of Christ? Is it not for that end a seal of the covenant of grace? If thou sayest thou usest it for this end, why then dost thou look after it no more, when thou returnest from that ordinance?!
If, then, we cannot accept Charles's over-dramatized and uncharitable view of his mother's experience at the sacrament, we must still grant that 1739 did mark a real turningpoint in her spiritual life. It is perhaps significant that her experience, like her father's, was described in terms of illumination. Once assured of his acceptance with God, Dr
Annesley had 'no more darkness' afterwards; and though Susanna's previous life had certainly not been spent in 'legal night', she did after 1739 apprehend more plainly and perfectly Him in whom there is no darkness at all. It cannot be contended that Susanna knew nothing of the forgiveness of God before that date, but thereafter she knew it with a new depth of personal awareness and certainty. It was as though an element in her spiritual heritage which had been dormant, awakened suddenly into vibrant life. The teaching of the Puritan divines who made up her father's circle, Dr Annesley's known experience of assurance, and her own half-realized grasp of the doctrine,? all coalesced in her new awareness of forgiveness. At this late stage of her pilgrimage, Susanna may be said to have reversed the order of historical development from Puritanism to the Age of Reason, and to have entered more fully into the living tradition of her Puritan forbears.
1 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 316 (2).
2 As Adam Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 73, points out, Susanna, expounding 'I believe in the Holy Ghost', 'hints at that doctrine .
. which is a standard article in the creed of every Methodist, viz., The doctrine of the witness of the Spirit in the souls of genuine believers. Her words are strong and pointed: "It is he that leadeth us into all truth. He helpeth our infirmities, assures us of our adoption, and will be with the Holy Catholic Church to the end of the world !"" '
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* Certainly it was the Methodist preaching of assurance—that a believer could know his sins forgiven in this life—which above all touched the eighteenth century exponents of reasonable religion on the raw. Here, we may venture to say, the seventeenth century triumphed over the eighteenth in Susanna, and the Puritanism in which she was bred found a new force and vigour when she cast in her spiritual lot with the Methodists.