But not everyone believed that it was wise to break down the barriers that had usually kept Newport’s Christians apart. The Reverend Vinal disliked the Baptists because of their rejection of infant baptism, and Joseph Fish had never forgiven them for destroying his church. During the early 1740s, two-thirds of his congregation in Stonington had walked out in order to found a new Separate Baptist congregation, and even twenty years later he had not forgotten the indignity of being attacked as “the devil” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Besides claiming that the Baptists wanted “to Banish Learning and Order from the Churches,” he accused them of mistaking frenzied emotion for grace.21
When Samuel Hopkins published excerpts from Sarah Osborn’s diary after her death, he omitted any references to her relationship with the Baptists. Sarah imagined a future in which doctrinal differences would be less important than “essentials,” but in this case Hopkins refused to let her speak for herself.22 Too much was at stake for him: the definition of what it meant to be an evangelical. He was not willing to admit that true Christians could disagree about doctrine.
During August 1766, Sarah was as anxious as she had been during the dark days preceding her conversion. At night she lay awake wondering whether she was doing God’s will. “I Have Lost six whole Nights sleep out of eleven without so much as one wink,” she confessed to Fish, “a seventh slept but one hour.” In a revealing analogy, she compared herself to Uriah the Hittite, who had been slaughtered on the front lines of battle because of David’s betrayal.23
Sarah’s “David” seems to have been Vinal, who had left her alone and vulnerable instead of helping with her meetings. The more that he drank, the more withdrawn and embittered he became. Sarah gently tried to raise the issue of his alcoholism by writing to him about others who struggled with the same problem, but he never responded. Although he accepted new members from her meetings, he refused to cross her threshold to preach. (When Samuel Hopkins published his account of Sarah Osborn’s life, he sidestepped the issue of Vinal’s involvement in her meetings by mentioning that he was not “able to attend.”) Sarah sent Vinal a letter suggesting that he and other ministers (including the Reverend Thurston, the Reverend John Maxson of the Seventh-day Baptist Church, and the Reverend Ezra Stiles of the Second Church of Christ) could take turns presiding at her meetings, but he condemned her “zeal” and her willingness to expose people to the wrong kind of Christianity. (He may have been especially angry because of her earlier letter about the dangers of too much drinking.) “I received your Letter but am not able to write a proper answer,” he retorted. “Your proposal of Having Proselytizing Ministers to assist in carrying on your religion I do by no means approve of. That has a worse tendency than you think. . . . Your zeal for God if you are not on your Guard will carry you astray.”24
Sarah was shocked by Vinal’s letter, but by 1766 he had become increasingly hostile and even paranoid, and he seems to have been afraid that other ministers were trying to steal his flock. After discovering that Ezra Stiles had baptized a child against his wishes, he accused Stiles of “savoring too much of a Fondness to meddle in Affairs of our Congregation, and in such a Way as has a direct Tendency to diminish our Congregation and to augment your own.” He was so “jealous” of Sarah’s friendship with other ministers that she hid her correspondence with them. “I Must Have a Great regard for but one,” she complained. As his relationship with his congregation deteriorated, he wrote an angry letter demanding that they pay him in goods if they lacked cash. He threatened to leave unless they complied, and to underline his point he signed the letter “your (present) pastor.”25
Vinal’s “indisposition,” as Sarah delicately called it, weighed heavily on her. Stung by his disapproval of her meetings, she struggled with doubts about her duty, even comparing herself to the prophet Jonah, who had run away from Nineveh out of fear. “Under this pressure poor Jonah fled,” she lamented to Fish. She was grateful for the support of her husband, Susanna Anthony, and Deacon Coggeshall, but when two close female friends, Mrs. Chesebrough and Mrs. Grant, warned her to send the crowds away, she was tempted to shut her doors. Once again she felt as though God had hidden his face, leaving her alone with her doubts.26
Yet unlike Jonah, Sarah was determined not to shirk God’s call, and as she prayed for guidance she felt the same sense of his mystical presence that had sustained her during other crises of faith, a feeling of oneness that collapsed the boundaries between heaven and earth. Referring to Psalm 104, she claimed that “God determined the soul to take up with nothing short of Himself and the Comforter came down and caused faith to Look above the tops of the Mountains and they flowed down at his presence.”27 Strengthened by her faith that the “Comforter” (the Holy Spirit) was hovering over her, she resolved not to let Vinal or anyone else keep her from doing God’s work.
Sarah wanted to be sure that her meetings were inspired by God, and suddenly it seemed that she saw proof of his favor wherever she looked: in the young people who had stopped “profaning the Lords Day Evenings by Plays and Pastimes”; in the children who wept at the thought of dying without Christ; and most of all in the Africans who sat quietly in her kitchen listening to the gospel. When she looked at the earnest people streaming through her doors every night, some with Bibles clasped in their hands, she regained the sense of certainty that had eluded her. In October she begged in her diary, “Permit me to feed thy lambs, and devote my whole life to the service of my God.”28
By January 1767, 525 people were coming to her house every week, including at least 70 Africans. Remarkably, more than 5 percent of Newport’s black population passed through her doors every Sunday evening.29 “We were so crowded there was scarce room to stir Hand or foot,” she marveled.30
Since evangelical history is filled with stories of leaders who took advantage of their power to touch people’s hearts, it is worth noting that Sarah’s life could have turned out differently. Exhilarated by her charisma, she could have become a demagogue. No one knew this better than Sarah herself, who prayed not to be “influenced by self-confidence or vain Glory.” During the revival she seems to have intensified her practice of self-discipline, privately chastising herself for being “sullen,” “covetous,” and “a depraved monster.”31 She did not want to forget that she was too weak and sinful to have brought about the revival on her own.
In February, Sarah finally received an answer to the long letter she had written to Joseph Fish the previous summer. Although this letter no longer survives, Sarah’s response makes it clear that he urged her to reconsider her meetings. At some point during the fall he had visited her house on a Sunday evening to pray with the “poor Blacks,” and he was alarmed by what he had witnessed. Besides chastising her for moving beyond her “line,” he worried that the presence of large numbers of blacks would eventually lead to trouble. He also wondered how she found time for private devotion and household chores while holding meetings every evening. Sarah had looked up to Fish for more than twenty years, and if anyone could have persuaded her to close her doors, it would have been he. But even he could not shake her confidence in her call. She began her response in a conciliatory fashion by portraying herself as “a Child in the Presence of her Father,” and she insisted (twice) that she did not want to be perceived as “Obstinate.” “I don’t reject counsel,” she insisted. “Don’t Let my Honored Father think I do.” Yet she also made it clear that she could not heed his advice. Although she would have liked to place her meetings for blacks “into Superior Hands,” no one had offered to help. (The exception was Thurston, the Baptist minister, whom she tactfully did not mention.) Denying that she had ever stepped out of her place, she explained, “I only read to them, talk to them, and sing a Psalm or Hymn with them, and then at Eight o’clock dismiss them all by Name as upon List. They call it School and I Had rather it be called almost anything that is good than Meeting.” Portraying herself as a teacher and a mother rather than a pastor, she explained, “The servants appe
ar to me no otherwise now then children though for stature Men and Women.”32
Sarah also reassured Fish that the blacks at her meetings had never been disorderly, and in fact the enslaved among them had become more obedient. “If any disturbance or disorder Should arise Either to the breaking of public or family Peace, that would immediately Make the path of duty Plain for dismissing at once, but on the contrary Ministers and Magistrates send their Servants and approve. And other Masters and Mistresses frequently send me presents in token of gratitude, Express their thanks, Speaking of the good Effects that through the blessing of the Lord it Has Had upon their Servants.” If good works were a sign of grace, then there was no doubt that many slaves were on the path to salvation. “Some that were unwilling to serve and saucy are become diligent and condescending,” she wrote proudly.33
In contrast to what she had written earlier, Sarah insisted that most Christians in Newport approved of her meetings, including “Ministers and Magistrates.” Perhaps the truth was more complicated, but Newport’s leaders may have put aside their doubts once they realized her commitment to fostering obedience. Sarah reported that both Mrs. Chesebrough and Mrs. Grant had recently thanked her “for persisting Steadily in the path of duty against their discouragements,” and although Mr. Chesebrough remained dubious, he was “quite silent.” Other brothers in the church supposedly defended her meetings as divinely inspired. When she had been “affrighted at the throng” in December and had considered sending people away, Deacon Coggeshall “insisted I ought not to do it.” As she explained, “Every Intimate brother and friend entreats and charges me not to dismiss So Long as things rest as they are, telling me it would be the worst day’s work that Ever I did if I should, as God Himself Has thus Employed me.”34
“God himself”: this was Sarah’s deepest conviction, and because of her long friendship with Fish she desperately wanted him to understand that she had been gripped by a force larger than herself. “As God Has Gathered I dare not Scatter,” she avowed. When she had tried to send a group of white boys to Deacon Coggeshall’s house on Sunday nights to ease the crowds, “they kept their places and would not stir,” refusing to budge until she promised to meet with them on Tuesday nights. “Still they will come,” she marveled to Fish.35 Because the events at her house defied rational explanation—who had ever heard of boys choosing prayer over play?—she was convinced that God was working through her.
Sarah saw even her gender as proof that the revival had been inspired by God. Echoing stereotypes instead of challenging them, she suggested that a “weak” woman could never have attracted so many people by virtue of her own authority. “Christ’s strength is Made perfect in my weakness,” she testified. “I am nothing and can do nothing without Him.” Remembering Paul’s words to the Corinthians, she wrote, “He has chosen the weak things of the world.”36
In response to Fish’s concern about the pressures on her time, Sarah assured him that neither she nor her family was suffering because of her meetings. She continued to read and write early in the mornings, “without which I must starve,” and friends and neighbors helped with housekeeping. “I Educate the children of poor Neighbors who Gladly pay me in washing, Ironing, Mending and Making,” she explained. “Every dear friend is ready to set a stitch or Help me in any wise.” Rebuffing Fish’s suggestion that her work was “too heavy” for one person, Sarah claimed to feel stronger than she had in years. “I used to Lie by, unable to sit up, usually one day in the week for years together,” she reminded him. “I have Lain by but one this winter and comparatively know nothing about weariness to what I did when I had so Great a School and ten or more children in family to attend.” With her illness apparently in partial remission, she was even able to walk at times. Although she was “not able to walk abroad, yet in the House I can walk and act sometimes a Little while with almost the vigors of youth.”37 This, too, seemed to be proof of God’s approval.
Sarah also argued that if she did not spend her evenings speaking about religion, she would probably be drawn into political gossip with visitors instead. It was a “critical day,” she reminded Fish, and although she did not elaborate on her point he would certainly have understood her meaning. Tensions between Loyalists and Patriots were threatening to erupt into violence. When an angry mob harassed the Newport custom’s collector, he published an advertisement ordering all protestors to “desist from such Attempts, otherwise it will be at the Peril of their Lives.” Everyone seemed to be talking about politics—everyone, that is, except Sarah Osborn and the people at her meetings, who believed that the debate over “taxation without representation” should take a back seat to the quest for salvation. On Election Day in 1767 she wrote in her diary, “This day Let others choose whom they will to rule and whom they will serve but I will renewedly choose the Great Governor of the Universe to rule in and reign over me.”38
We do not know how Fish responded to Sarah’s defense of her meetings, but he seems to have visited Newport again sometime that winter, and in another letter to him in May, Sarah mentioned that his wise counsel had prevented many worshipers from joining the Baptists. Yet the relationship between the two seems to have been strained. After offering him “ten thousand thanks” for his “care and tender regard,” she begged him not to end their friendship. “Permit me to beg you will not cast me off,” she pleaded, even if he believed that her “Conduct” had rendered her “unworthy of farther Notice.” In 1767 she broke off her relationship with the Baptists because she did not want to “Grieve nor offend” him.39
Yet there were limits to her deference. She continued to hold meetings at her house, and despite keeping her distance from the Reverend Thurston, she strongly defended him as a faithful minister whose “precious truths” had changed lives. When Fish published a book attacking the Separates and Baptists for creating schisms in Congregationalist churches, Sarah decided that in good conscience she could not help finance its publication by subscribing to it. Although a few members of her church had turned Baptist, she insisted that Thurston had never intended to cause controversy. He was not guilty of anything other than “affable, courteous behavior”—hardly a crime.40
Fish was more generous than the Reverend Vinal, and he seems to have decided that their friendship was more important than his scruples about her evangelism. Though he never actively supported her meetings, he tolerated them, and she continued to attract large crowds throughout 1767. She often used her diary to keep track of the number who attended: thirty-seven “young Handmaids” met on March 9, forty-three on March 16, forty-nine on March 23. Her Sunday meetings for blacks and young men were always the largest. Even on a stormy night in March, more than seventy blacks met in her kitchen while a group of young white men met upstairs. “Our House was Last Night filled as full as it ever was,” she exclaimed in the spring.41
Some of her family members seem to have been caught up in the fervor. Besides Henry, Sarah’s nephew William Guise Haggar (her deceased brother’s son) often attended the men’s group. He was a member of Ezra Stiles’s church, but he had recently become a father at the age of twenty-nine, and he may have wanted to think more seriously about the meaning of his life. Although the evidence is murky, two of her step-grandchildren also may have been touched by the revival. “Bless my dear son,” she prayed in her diary. “Turn and Look Him into an Evangelical flow of repentance.” (Since she had raised her grandson since childhood, she might have referred to him as her “son.”)42 In addition, her granddaughter Sally was almost certainly the “Fatherless” girl whose “turn in temper,” “diligence,” and kindness to others seemed like “marvelous” evidence of her spiritual transformation.43 There is no record of whether Abigail remained in contact with her children, but Sarah never seems to have regretted her decision to separate them from their mother. Besides rescuing them from poverty, she believed that she had saved their souls.
Sarah’s meetings remained controversial, however, and even Deacon Coggeshall, one of her warmes
t supporters, began to worry that she had pushed the boundaries of her evangelism too far. In April 1767 he warned her to stop praying aloud in front of black men. Despite their race, they were still men, and yet she addressed them almost as if she were a preacher. Praying for guidance, Sarah asked God whether her behavior was “offensive” or “ostentatious.” Although she knew that she “ought not to pray in so public a Manner as it were in the corner of the street to be seen,” she was determined to obey God’s will even if it caused a scandal. “Man can’t determine me,” she wrote fiercely. “Man’s opinion alone shant content me for or against. Tis thy approbation I want. Let me but please God and tis enough. Only Let me know by thy spirit accompanying thy word that I do so and it is enough.” Later that month she confessed in her diary, “I dared not omit praying.” In the margins she added, “Deacon Coggeshall had bid me omit it if I dared—and I dared not.”44
Always on the lookout for Satan, Sarah saw his hand—or rather his “paw”—behind her troubles. Imagining him as a “Lion,” she begged God to “Put his Hook in his Nose and turn him back by the way he came.” Not since the days of her conversion had she felt such an intense awareness of evil. Enraged by her evangelism to the heathen, Satan was plotting “to break up my Evening exercise which has been so refreshing to me.” Though Sarah rarely compared herself to biblical warriors, she swore to put on “the whole armor of God” to fight the devil. Boldly addressing him in the first person, she promised to vanquish him with the “shield of faith,” “the helmet of salvation,” and “the sword of the Spirit.”45
Sarah Osborn's World Page 34
