Wigglesworth’s 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.

[Place for Truth] 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]

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