Since Wilberforce’s life followed or overlapped with those of these and comparable figures, he knew at the time of his conversion that he was in good company. Those who had embraced varying forms of Methodism and evangelicalism and experienced a crisis of religious conversion were often persuasive, well connected and, as in the case of his kinsman John Thornton, a leading figure in the Evangelical revival of the time, comfortingly rich. Nevertheless, they were a small minority, still open to the strong suspicions and hostility which Wilberforce had witnessed in his mother in earlier years, and in most cases they saw their newly crystallised religious duty as being to spread the word of God through preaching and missions rather than to try to pursue Christian principles through the political world. The tumult going on in Wilberforce’s mind that summer would therefore have embraced serious doubts about the viability of the political career he had recently done so much to advance.
In spite of these considerations, Wilberforce clearly felt an ineluctable pull towards an enthusiasm for Christianity which would guide and dictate all his future actions in every aspect of life. While he attributed his new feelings to the intervention of Providence, in common with the experience across faiths of nearly all kinds of religious conversion, with a sense of being controlled from above and accepting Divine Grace, there were many personal factors which could have affected him. His effortless possession of great wealth, and the long period of relative leisure which it had permitted, may have helped to create in him a feeling of guilt towards other people. Certainly, one of his early resolutions as he adopted a new regimen of life was to live more frugally. His diary for 25 November recorded, ‘Walked, and stagecoach, to save the expense of a chaise,’57 and he would become increasingly generous towards a wide range of charitable causes. In addition, there are signs that he was suffering a twinge of disillusionment with conventional politics by the middle of 1785. His call to Pitt for ‘something out of the common way’ almost certainly reflects his disappointment that Pitt’s triumph of the earlier year had failed to elevate the conduct of politics as a whole. Reform had been defeated, rotten boroughs remained, idealism on Ireland had been frustrated, the culture of place-seeking, patronage and parties remained. As time and travel separated him from the intense partisanship of the 1784 election, his disdain for fixed party loyalties may already have been resurfacing. He had always idealised the exercising of independent judgement, and a fresh philosophical framework for such judgement must have had its appeal.
It is impossible to know what other subconscious forces pushed William Wilberforce that November into the agony of his conversion crisis. Such was the effect, he later wrote, of the ‘sense of my great sinfulness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour … that for months I was in a state of the deepest depression … nothing which I have ever read in the accounts of others exceeded what I then felt’.58 Having attained the great heights of becoming a Member for Yorkshire, but having no expectation of becoming a minister, did he reflect, at the age of twenty-six, that his personal ambitions had already reached their limit? Was it that the excesses of the London clubland he inhabited, with its gambling, womanising, gluttony and prostitution, had finally revolted him? Had the enormous amount of time he had spent travelling, and the futility of his recent efforts in the Commons, given him a stronger than usual sense of waste and lack of purpose? Or was it that having discovered that attaining his ambitions and satisfying all his material needs did not lead to satisfaction, he was predisposed to search for something which could represent for him the highest ambition of them all? By November 1785 some mixture of these influences, added to his early receptiveness towards religion, the guidance of Doddridge’s writing, and the force of Milner’s arguments, produced in William Wilberforce a true conversion crisis.
In his book The Psychology of Religion, published at the end of the nineteenth century, E.D. Starbuck identified the mental attributes of a full-blown conversion crisis: ‘struggle after the new-life: prayer, calling on God; sense of estrangement from God; doubts and questioning: tendency to resist conviction; depression and sadness; restlessness, anxiety, and uncertainty; helplessness and humility; earnestness and seriousness … The central fact in it all is the sense of sin.’59 For a time, such a crisis could produce a state of deep dissatisfaction and a divided personality, the individual concerned oscillating between aiming for new ideals and believing that he cannot attain them. The more the prospective convert struggled to be free of sin, the more he would become conscious of his past sins and his unworthiness. The stricter he tried to become about religious devotion, observances and prayer, the more likely he was to be tempted away by the various attractions of human society, and to feel that he was trying to adopt a standard which could not be maintained. Such internal conflict, well documented by John Wesley, Whitefield, Fletcher and Henry Venn, eventually produces a mental breaking point, resulting in conversion, retreat or collapse. The honesty and thoroughness of Wilberforce’s diary-keeping meant that he left behind him a clear and revealing account of this agony:
25th. Up at six – private devotions half an hour – Pascal three quarters* – to town on business. I feel quite giddy and distracted by the tumult, except when in situations of which I am rather ashamed, as in the stage coach: the shame, pride; but a useful lesson …
Sunday 27th. Up at six – devotions half an hour – Pascal three quarters – Butler** three quarters – church – read the Bible, too ramblingly, for an hour – heard Butler, but not attentively, two hours – meditated twenty minutes – hope I was more attentive at church than usual, but serious thoughts vanished the moment I went out of it, and very insensible and cold in the evening service – some very strong feelings when I went to bed; God turn them to account, and in any way bring me to himself. I have been thinking I have been doing well by living alone, and reading generally on religious subjects; I must awake to my dangerous state, and never be at rest till I have made my peace with God.
My heart is so hard, my blindness so great, that I cannot get a due hatred of sin, though I see I am all corrupt, and blinded to the perception of spiritual things.
28th. I hope as long as I live to be the better for the meditation of this evening; it was on the sinfulness of my own heart, and its blindness and weakness. True, Lord, I am wretched, and miserable and naked. What infinite love, that Christ should die to save such a sinner and how necessary is it He should save us altogether that we may appear before God with nothing of our own! God grant I may not deceive myself, in thinking I feel the beginnings of gospel comfort. Began this night constantly family prayer, and resolved to have it every morning and evening, and to read a chapter when time.
Tuesday 29th. I bless God I enjoyed comfort in prayer this evening. I must keep my own unworthiness ever in view. Pride is my greatest stumbling block; and there is danger in it in two ways – lest it should make me desist from a Christian life, through fear of the world, my friends, &c.; or if I persevere, lest it should make me vain of so doing. In all disputes on religion, I must be particularly on my guard to distinguish it from a zeal for God and his cause. I must consider and set down the marks whereby they may be known from each other. I will form a plan of my particular duty, praying God to enable me to do it properly, and set it before me as a chart of the country, and map of the road I must travel …
November 30th. Was very fervent in prayer this morning, and thought these warm impressions would never go off. Yet in vain endeavoured in the evening to rouse myself. God grant it may not all prove vain; oh if it does, how