Anne Dutton

Born in Northampton, she survived a near-fatal childhood illness, from which "she acquired an acute sense of sin."^[2] Calvinistic doctrine influenced her upbringing, ^[3] and thus, she was given a religious education.

At 22 she married a Mr Coles, living in London and Warwick, before being widowed five years later. She married again to Benjamin Dutton, a clothier who entered the Baptist ministry. They settled at Great Gransden, Huntingdonshire, in 1732,^[2] and paid for a chapel to be built there. A desire to give "service to the Cause of Christ" gradually overcame her ill health.^[2] In 1747, her husband travelled to America to raise money, but she became widowed again when his return ship was lost at sea.^[4]

Dutton's Narration of the Wonders of Grace (1734) was a 1,500-line poem in heroic couplets, complete with marginal references to Scripture, reviewing redemption history from the point of view of Calvinist Baptists. (A modern scholar has called it "execrable verse, interesting only as testimony to the mental tilt of a particular kind of zealot".^[4]) In her correspondence with Wesley she differed with him over the question of Election. A Brief Account of the Negroes Converted to Christ in America was one of 13 tracts and letters she published in 1743 alone. George Whitefield was another recipient of her work.^[2]

Selections from her work were republished in six volumes in 2003–2009.^[5]

Through letters, Dutton frequently debated with prominent theologians, George Whitfield and John Wesley. Dutton's use of rhetorical techniques is seen in her rebuttals to Wesley's beliefs about the doctrine of unconditional election–the idea that God specifically chooses particular individuals for eternal salvation. In one of these letters to Wesley, Dutton employs analogy–defined by Richard Whately as “'an argument ‘in which the instance adduced is somewhat more remote from that to which it is applied.'”^[6] She alludes to the well-known narrative of Jacob and Esau, identifying God's favor of one brother (Jacob) over the other (Esau). She then applies this idea of God's unconditional favor to persons of succeeding generations, rendering the two examples analogous.^[7]

In another letter to Wesley, Dutton uses a rhetorical device often seen in Old Testament writing: parallelism^[8]. Coupled words and phrases in her letter include: “blame” and “wrath,” along with, “set them before thee” and “bring them safe to Glory” ^[7] In doing so, Dutton combines Greco-Roman (logos, ethos, and pathos) as well as Jewish rhetorical techniques (parallelism) to refute Wesley’s claim that unconditional election is not grounded in scripture. Dutton references Scripture numerous times in her letters to Wesley and shows a thorough command of Biblical prose. She employs covenant language which also acts as rhetorical strategy used to sway Wesley away from his opposition to the truth of the Gospels^[7] Such covenantal language includes an allusion to Genesis 43:9 when Judah offers his word to Jacob that he will not only safely take Benjamin to Egypt, but safely bring him home.^[9] Her use of covenant language aligns with the idea that "G/d is the master-rhetorician." ^[10] Together, these elements illustrate Dutton’s consistent use of classical and biblical rhetorical strategies in her correspondence with Wesley.