I thought I'd blog a little on my research. I've been reading through stacks of unpublished letters, written in the eighteenth century to Charles Wesley, hunting for letters about suffering - sickness, bereavement, persecution, childbirth. It is sad reading, and sometimes it feels morally questionable to be reading letters which share such private thoughts and feelings. And yet it's fascinating to have the opportunity to listen to these long-dead Methodists, to hear how they understood and managed the terrible pains that eighteenth-century life so often brought.
There are hundreds of letters to Charles from his wife Sally. I've been looking in detail at the letter she wrote to inform him that one of their sons had died. She wrote:
My Dearest Mr Wesley,
This comes to acquaint you that our dear little Babe is no more, his agony is over but it was a hard struggle before he could depart, He was dying all yesterday from two o'clock and about 9 last night he departed. He screamed three times about half an hour before he died, that he could be heard from Nurse's Parlour to the other side of the street, not through guilt (that is my comfort) but through extreme pain, perhaps were I of Calvin's opinion I might have attributed it to a different cause, but glory be to a blessed Redeemer's love for declaring (for the consolation of distressed Parents) that "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven". O that I may land as safely in the harbour of eternal Peace...
It's a deeply moving letter. And I am struck that at the most intimate level of this eighteenth-century woman's grief over her dead son, theological debates mattered. So much English history is written as though theology had meaning only for the elites, while 'popular' religion was a matter of superstition and learned ritual. The letters I'm reading suggest that quite complicated theological debates were a matter of genuine and practical concern for the working classes. Where theology dealt with life and death (including who would be saved and how) people took notice.
1 comment:
That is a very good point, and I shouldn't suggest that Sally Wesley's views are representative of early Methodists (particularly working class Methodists, as Sally was definitely not working class) without providing more evidence. I don't think Sally was unusually analytical, but I think she was inevitably more aware of current theological debates because her husband was so involved in them. On the basis of the other letters I've read (and I'll post a few more examples soon) I'd say many women were theologically aware and had definite opinions on the big theological questions of the day. Certainly Charles records plenty of theological arguments that he had with women!
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