Wigglesworth believed that he was essentially not worthy of believing in God as a result of his depraved humanity. When he underwent a series of nocturnal emissions in his early life, he was thereafter convinced of his damnation. Through his diaries, he recounts his struggle to remain pure and good, despite continually relapsing into what he viewed as man's natural depravity.[3]
At one point, Wigglesworth was overcome with a psychosomatic disorder in which he felt he should not preach. His confused and disappointed congregation elected to find a replacement for Wigglesworth, an unnamed preacher who went on to embezzle funds from the church. Thereafter, Wigglesworth was reinstated and encouraged to take up preaching again.
In his diaries, Wigglesworth expresses an overwhelming sense of inferiority. First with his refusal to accept the presidency of Harvard due to his lack of self-confidence, and again when he married his cousin because, he claims, he is not good enough to find another woman.
Wigglesworth was plagued by his attraction to his male students, many of whom were his close contemporaries in age. The passages in his diary about these attractions are written in a secret code, allowing him to be explicit about his feelings and his fears.
On April 5, 1653, Wigglesworth wrote, "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."[4] On July 4, 1653, he struggled with "filthy lust" inspired by "my fond affection for my students while in their presence." Wigglesworth married in 1655, but his attraction to men continued. The day after his marriage Wigglesworth confessed to his diary: "I feel stirrings and strongly of my former distemper even after the use of marriage --which makes me exceeding afraid."[5]
Yet he was widowed twice, and married a third time: Mary Reyner in 1655, Martha Mudge in 1679 and Sybil (Avery) Spearhawk in 1691.[1]
In 1662 he published The Day of Doom or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment, a "doggerel epitome of Calvinistic theology", according to a later anthology, Colonial Prose and Poetry (1903), that says it "attained immediately a phenomenal popularity. Eighteen hundred copies were sold within a year, and for the next century it held a secure place in New England Puritan households. As late as 1828 it was stated that "many aged persons were still alive who could repeat it, as it had been taught them with their catechism; and the more widely one reads in the voluminous sermons of that generation, the more fair will its representation of prevailing theology in New England appear."[1] A less polemic analysis of the work might also show its rich use of dramatic imagery, combining a number of references from both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and note the interlocked complexity of its double-rhymed octasina (8-syllable) lines.[6]
Despite the fierce denunciations of sinners and the terrible images of damnation in The Day of Doom, its author was known as a "genial philanthropist, so cheerful that some of his friends thought he could not be so sick as he averred. Dr. Peabody used to call him 'a man of the beatitudes', ministering not alone to the spiritual but to the physical needs of his flock, having studied medicine for that purpose," according to Colonial Prose and Poetry.[1]
Other works by Wigglesworth include God's Controversy with New England, Meat out of the Eater, and "God's Controversy with New England," (1662). The latter poem was unpublished, yet provides a lengthy commentary on the fears of Puritans that they would be stricken by God for their sin, and persecuted by House of Stuart.[7]
