Michael Wigglesworth

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Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) was a Puritan minister and poet whose The Day of Doom was a bestseller in early New England.

When Wigglesworth was ten years old his father became bed-ridden, forcing the boy to leave his schooling in order to help maintain the family farm.

Wigglesworth believed that he was essentially not worthy of believing in God as a result of merely being human. 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.

When Wigglesworth becomes a minister of a church, he is soon overcome with a psychosomatic disorder in which he feels he can, ironically, do everything except preach. His confused and disappointed congregation elects to find a replacement for Wigglesworth, an unnamed preacher who goes on to embezzle funds from the church. Thereafter, Wigglesworth is reinstated and encouraged to take up preaching again.

In his diaries, Wigglesworth's expresses an overwhelming sense of inferiority. Amongst many, two of the most notable instances that occur are: first with his refusal to accept the presidency of Harvard due to his lack of self-confidence, and again when he marries his cousin because, he claims, he is not good enough to find another woman.

In the 1650s, Wigglesworth confided in encoded messages of his diary that he was plagued by homosexual attractions to his male students, which continued even after his marriage. This is documented in the PBS film Out of the Past.