Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Article Title
Keywords
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment, Methodism, methodist women, Mary Bosanquet
Abstract
In 1770, the renowned Methodist leader Mary Bosanquet (later Fletcher) published a letter of advice she had written to a young woman named Elizabeth Andrews. Amidst a flood of detailed advice about the life of faith, including recommendations about spiritual disciplines, reading matter, and marriage, Bosanquet urged her young friend:
Strive to be little and unknown; and remember that our Lord lived thirty years in private, and only three in publick, and that the word of God allows a woman, professing godliness, no adorning but that of a meek and quiet spirit. Strive, I say, to be little and unknown; yet if God, on any occasion, see fit to call you out into more publick action, then also say, Thy will be done, and embrace, with a ready mind, whatever your Saviour pleases.
Recommended Citation
Cruickshank, Joanna
(2011)
""If God ... see fit to call you out": "Public" and "Private" in the Writings of Methodist Women, 1760-1840,"
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment: Vol. 2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rae/vol2/iss1/5