Sarah Crosby

Zachariah Taft and women evangelists. Five women to encourage and inspire.

Part 5: by Catherine Coffey.

Sarah Crosby receives the longest entry in Taft’s book. As an evangelist, she was famous for holding a ‘public meeting every morning at 5 o’clock, and also in the evening and very frequently on week-days, both in the forenoon and afternoon’. Crosby was an itinerant preacher who took advantage of the times when working people were free to attend her meetings, and maintained a close relationship with Wesley, keeping extensive diaries which she turned into several books before her death.

To a modern eye, Crosby’s soul searching is intense. She described being ‘overwhelmed’ with the sense of God’s power, determined to know whether God has ‘taken the root of sin out of my heart’. At various times she decides that she should ’judge myself so much more the unfit for heaven’ and even that her account of ‘the fiery darts and suggestions I was assaulted with’ would be impossible. Taft summarises this by asserting that ‘she was a Christian of no ordinary stamp’.

She heard the famous evangelist George Whitfield preach and records the ‘many blessings God gave me through him’. Sarah was a reader giving extensive time to John Wesley’s publications as well as listening to both Charles and John preach. After initially dismissing John Wesley ‘my prejudices were strong against him’ she was won over and travelled to meet him to apologise and join his connection. This enabled her to get the experience that would lead to her prolific ministry in later life. ‘I was made a leader of a class’ she wrote, a responsibility she took very seriously.

It was her role in leading the class that began to launch her public ministry and she recounts the day that, expecting thirty to turn up, she was confronted with a class of ‘near two hundred’. Unsure as to whether she ought to preach to them collectively she nevertheless saw that it was ‘impracticable to meet all these people by way of speaking particularly to each individual’ and decided to speak to them all at once. She later wrote to John Wesley for reassurance and he replied ‘I do not see you have broken any law’. This marked the start of Wesley’s encouragement of women evangelists and Crosby’s lengthy correspondence with him. Initially he was cautious, and advised her not to take a text, but to ‘intermix short exhortations with prayer’. As time went on though, Wesley became convinced of the authenticity of her call, noting the Apostle Paul’s own granting of ‘extraordinary exceptions’ such as at Corinth.

Sarah’s evangelistic ministry took her all over the country- from Yorkshire to Essex and her regime of early morning and evening meetings was relentless- at times it impacted her health. ‘I was very weak and poorly’, she recalled but nevertheless ‘joined with those who kept intercession at twelve’. Sarah worked in an all female team, at times as the assistant of Mary Fletcher who established an orphanage and worked with Crosby, Sarah Ryan and Miss Tripp.

Crosby died in 1804 aged seventy-five. Taft concluded ‘She lives in the memories of thousands’ and her long-time friend Anne Tripp added that she ‘will live long in the affections of those who had the happiness of her particular instructions and intimacy’.

Crosby’s work ethic and commitment to travel to speak to people about Jesus mark her out. However, many more of Taft’s female evangelists travelled further - a notable example was that of Catherine Phillips.