Michael Wigglesworth and His Struggle With Same-Sex Desires

Editorial Note:

There are a number of reasons why Wigglesworth’s diary is a help to those who struggle with same-sex attraction in our day. First, as Carr points out, Wigglesworth understands that his desires are sinful and therefore must be confessed to the God who sees all. Second, Wigglesworth found, contrary to his fears, “so much comfort in a married estate,” which did not remove his sinful lusts but was an acknowledged help in the fight. Thus, Wigglesworth goes against the conventional wisdom today, and sadly, even some of that which is found in the church.  

Michael Wigglesworth and His Struggle With Same-Sex Desires

How would a Christian deal with same-sex desires in the seventeenth century? What about a Puritan minister? We can get a glimpse of this struggle by reading the diary of Michael Wigglesworth – a diary he never intended to share with others. He might forgive us for peering at it if we use it to grow in compassion and understanding.

A Respected Minister and Poet

            Wigglesworth was both on October 18, 1631, in England (possibly in Yorkshire) and emigrated to America in 1638 with his family, settling in New Haven. In 1651 he graduated from Harvard College, where he was a tutor and a fellow from 1652 to 1654.

In 1654, his poor health prevented him from accepting a call to pastor a church in Malden, Massachusetts – a post he filled two years later. His health, however, continued to deteriorate, even though he kept such a cheerful countenance that people wondered if he was really sick.

Whenever his health forced him to stop working, he wrote. His most famous work, a long poem entitled The Day of Doom: or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment, was published in 1662. The first edition, counting 1800 copies, was sold within a year, and the book continued to enjoy much popularity. In 1671, he published another long poem entitled God’s Controversy with New England.

As other ministers of his day, Wigglesworth also took an interest in medicine – a subject he found particularly interesting in view of his puzzling and persisting health conditions.

In 1663, he took a seven-month trip to Bermuda, in hopes of improving his health (sea trips were encouraged at that time for all kinds of illnesses). In Wigglesworth’s case, however, the trip seemed to have made things worse.

Back in Malden, Wigglesworth continued to pastor the local church until his death in 1705. Cotton Mather, son of Increase Mather who had been a student of Wigglesworth, preached at the poet’s funeral.

In spite of the homosexual tendencies revealed in his diary, Wigglesworth outlived two wives, married a third one, and fathered eight children.

A Coded Diary

As many other Puritans, Wigglesworth wrote a diary where he described his thoughts, his daily activities, and the lessons he learned along the way. His most troubling feelings, those of sexual attraction for his male students, were recorded in a secret code. This system allowed him to explore his emotions and lay them open before God while concealing them to others.

After all, he knew the futility of hiding anything from God. In The Day of Doom, he devoted several lines to this fact:

It’s vain, moreover, for Men to cover
  the least Iniquity;
The Judge hath seen, and privy been
  to all their villainy.
He unto light and open sight
  the work of darkness brings;
He doth unfold both new old,
  both known and hidden things.[1]

Revealing these feelings to others would instead have been disastrous in a colony where sexual deviancies were met with heavy penalties. His encoded confessions were only decoded in the 1960s by historian Edmund Morgan.

His struggle against his homosexual tendencies was fierce and often seemed hopeless. In 1655, after much deliberation and fear that marriage would make his condition worse, he agreed to marry a cousin, Mary Reyner. The deciding factor seems to have been the opinion of a doctor that marriage might be beneficial to his health. But marriage didn’t remove his attraction to men. The day after his marriage he wrote, “I feel stirrings and strongly of my former distemper even after the use of marriage, which makes me exceeding afraid.”[2]

A couple of months later, however, he wrote, “I am infinitely indebted unto the Lord that gives me so much comfort in a married estate contrary to my fears.”[3]After this, he had ups and downs in his marriage as in the rest of his life.

While the majority of recent studies focus on Michael Wigglesworth’s struggle with homosexual desires, the rest of his writings introduce us to a complex man who took his responsibilities seriously and cared intensely for the spiritual welfare of others, to the point that he wrote a whole paragraph on whether he should tell his neighbors that their door was swinging back and forth in the wind. “If worrying would have saved New England, Wigglesworth would have saved it,”[4] Morgan wrote in his introduction to Wigglesworth’s decoded diary.

But, as Dr Christy Wang points out in a 2023 St Antholin Lecture[5], Wigglesworth’s story is further complicated by his unwavering trust in God’s mercy in Christ. If Morgan can write that “Wigglesworth’s meditations are neither pretty nor pleasant,”[6] it might be because this emphasis on the gospel is easy to miss when focusing on a surprising confession of sin or a relentless acknowledgment of guilt.

Undying Confidence in God’s Love

While the torment in Wigglesworth’s diary is real, it is usually accompanied by an acknowledgment of God’s love – making his cries of despair reminiscent of Job’s frustrations or the Psalmist’s complaints.

This is so from the first page of Wigglesworth’s diary, where he writes: “If the unloving carriages of my pupils can go so to my heart as they do; how then do my vain thoughts, my detestable pride, my unnatural filthy lust that are so oft and even this day in some measure stirring in me, how do these grieve my Lord Jesus that loves me infinitely more than I do them?”[7]

The rest of the first entry explores the contradiction he felt in caring for the souls of others while acknowledging his own sins and his tendency to take pride in what good he could do to others while little of that was done unto the Lord. Overall, Wigglesworth’s diary can provide much instruction and comfort to those who are struggling with any type of sin or unwanted desires.

Wigglesworth’s distress was aggravated by the fact that his same-sex desires often expressed themselves in ways he could not avoid, such as involuntary seminal discharge or unwelcome dreams.

“I find my spirit so exceedingly carried with love to my pupils that I can't tell how to take up my rest in God,” he wrote. “Lord for this cause I am afraid of my wicked heart. Fear takes hold of me.”[8]

There is no trace of hypocrisy in Wigglesworth’s diary. The code is not meant to hide heinous sins under the guise of a victorious life. Instead, the diarist fills every page with a profound sense of his sinful nature. The code was meant to hide details that would have been dangerous to reveal.

In her lecture, Wang points out that recurring doubt, conviction of sin, and despair is not incompatible with progressive sanctification. A lack of understanding of a principle that has been foundational in much of Christian history can lead modern critics to conclude that Puritans such as Wigglesworth were bound to find solace outside of God.

On the contrary, Wigglesworth is conscious of his union with Christ regardless of his struggle against sin. Once he wrote: “I found my spirit in a troubled perplexed sunken frame this day, propense to fretting: yet so sensual and mind so full of vain thoughts, as I could not get my heart into a praying frame. a little at length the Lord did breath this evening, and gives me to see, the riches of his love continued, though I continue my provocations. And oh, that I could see still more of my own vileness, and the sweet love of my gracious God, whom, woe is me, I abuse.”[9]

Many of his entries affirmed his confidence in his place as God’s adopted child: “I am thine. Save me. I am asham’d that I walk as if I were not thine. Pardon me in the blood of the everlasting Covenant.”[10]

Some Puritans’ diaries include what might seem to us excessive introspection. Wigglesworth’s soul-searching and repetition, however, display an undisputable sincerity. His diary is the honest description of the day-to-day struggle with relentless sins that persevere in spite of many attempts to eradicate them and desperate prayers. It can be of comfort to anyone who has to battle persistent sins over, whatever their nature. There is comfort in knowing others fought similar battles before us and persevered by keeping their eyes on the merciful promises of God.

The Day of Doom, as gloomy and fearful as it is, ends with the same confidence that pulled Wigglesworth through his life’s struggles:

Oh blessed state of the Renate!
  Oh wond’rous happiness.
To which they’re brought beyond what thought
  can reach or words express!
Grief’s watercourse and sorrow’s source
  are turn’d to joyful streams;
Their old distress and heaviness
  are vanished like dreams.

For God above in arms of love
  doth dearly them embrace.
And fills their sprights with such delights,
  and pleasures in his Grace,
As shall not fail, nor yet grow stale,
  through frequency of use;
Nor do they fear God’s favor there
  to forfeit by abuse.

For there the Saints are perfect Saints,
  and holy ones indeed;
From all the sin that dwelt within
  their mortal bodies freed;
Made Kings and Priests to God through Christ’s
  dear Love’s transcendency,
There to remain and there to reign
  with him Eternally.[11]