Front cover image for Susanna Wesley : the complete writings

Susanna Wesley : the complete writings

"Susanna Wesley, long celebrated in Methodist mythology as mother of the movement's founders, now takes her place as a practical theologian in her own right. This collection of her letters, spiritual diary, and longer treatises (only one of which was published in her lifetime) shows her to be more than the nurturing mother of Wesleyan legend. It also reveals her to be a well-educated woman in conversation with contemporary theological, philosophical, and literary works. Her quotations and allusions include Locke, Pascal, and Herbert, as well as a number of now forgotten theologians. In some of her work, one can distinguish doctrinal and spiritual leanings, such as Arminianism and Christian perfection, that would later find wide expression in the spread of Methodism." "Further, her writings demonstrate her readiness, for conscience's sake, to stand up to the men in her life - father, husband, and sons - and the three incarnations of English Protestantism their represented: respectively, Puritanism, the Established Church, and the new Methodist movement. Tracing these incidents in her letters and diaries, a reader can begin to understand how spirituality, even an otherwise conservative one in rather restrictive times, can serve to empower the voice of women."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©1997
Oxford University Press, New York, ©1997
Biographies
xiv, 504 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
9780195074376, 0195074378
32396426
Part I : Letters
Religious and sexual politics : Yarborough and Hickes correspondence
"Dear Sammy" : Samuel Wesley Jr. school correspondence
More letters to "dear Sammy"
The rectory fire
The evening prayers controversy
An age of reason
and credulity
A rich brother in India
Advice to an Oxford man
Distinction at Oxford, scandal at home
A continuing cure of souls
Advice to the Holy Club
More advice, more concern
A widow and a supportive critic of revival
Last letters
Part II : Journals
"Think much and speak little" : first surviving entries
"Keep a due guard over your words"
"You write what is familiar to you by practice"
"I cannot altogether acquiesce"
"But what do you think?"
"Bend the whole force of the mind in a serious use of the ways and means of religion"
"The most blest and happy day"
"These blessed lucid intervals"
"To feel a vital joy overspread and cheer the heart"
Part III : Educational, catechetical, and controversial writings
On educating my family
The Apostle's Creed explicated in a letter to her daughter Susanna
Obedience to the Laws of God : a brief (unfinished) exposition on the Ten Commandments
A religious conference between mother and Emilia
Some remarks on a letter from Whitefield