One Family Under God. Anna M. Lawrence

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      Figure 5. Catherine Livingston Garrettson, engraving by John Chester Buttre, ca. 1863. Courtesy of the Drew University Methodist Collection.

      In 1787, she felt a true conversion where “[a] song of praise and thanksgiving was put in my mouth—my sins were pardoned my state was changed; my soul was happy. In a transport of joy I sprang from my knees, and happening to see myself as I passed the glass I could not but look with surprise at the change in my countenance. All things were become new.” Livingston captured in her diary the sense of new birth, as she saw the world with different eyes and felt transformed. She shared her conversion with her mother who seemed happy for her.⁷⁷ Like Roe, she avoided all social gatherings in earnest, discarded her frivolous clothes and trimmings, and opted for only serious clothes and serious pursuits.

      Much like Mary Bosanquet, one of Livingston’s key entries into Methodism was through a servant. A housekeeper gave her a copy of Wesley’s writings, “so that I ever claimed him for my spiritual father. And I often thought of writing, to let him know how much I was obligated to love and honor him. These books had opened to me the way to get religion and the only way to keep it when attained.”⁷⁸ Her true family, Livingston claimed, was not found in her family’s house, but in the books and narratives circulating through the transatlantic Methodist family. In 1787, Livingston sought increasing solitude, and she took to writing an account of her spiritual life. In the first pages she prays that she can “put on the whole ‘Armour of God,’ Having my loins girt about with Truth and having on the Breastplate of Righteousness.”⁷⁹ The imagery of war was significant. Not only did Livingston feel combative toward the omnipresent sinfulness and temptations of living in this world, but she also felt like a warrior who stood alone in this fight, because she was at odds with those nearest and dearest to her, her unconverted family and friends. Because she lived at a great distance from the nearest Methodist society, Livingston had no alternate family around her. Yet she entered into a virtual spiritual family by imbibing their literature and following their practices by praying, isolating herself, reflecting, and writing in her spiritual diary.

      Like many Methodists, Livingston worried that her newfound religiosity and its deep psychological effects appeared as insanity to outsiders. She reported mood swings, alternating doubt and joyfulness in her spiritual state. One day in December of 1787, Livingston wrote of waking in a good mood as usual, thinking happily of her relationship to God. Then, after she took a walk and began some self-examination, she found some longestablished faults, vanity and selfishness. “Instead of praying to that Great power, Whose Hand is ever near to help those who confide in Him, I prayed that He would lay me low, low in the Dust, before Him, that He would shew me myself, and encrease my dependence upon Him. Presumtuous Wretch!”⁸⁰ Her happiness disintegrated over the course of the day until she felt herself at the very bottom, “deform’d with Sin, Naked, Helpless, Worthless, beyond the power of Language.” She wrote, “the terrors of the Law, and the Arm of a Just Judge; appeared to be lifted up to strike a Guilty Wretch…. Was it any wonder my poor Weak reason, was on the point of deserting its mansion forever!—My Actions, and language I knew were those of a Frantic Bedlamite.”⁸¹ In this passage, she wrote of feeling isolated, and she poignantly described the sensation of losing her reason. She wrote with surprising self-awareness of being on the edge of suicide.⁸²