Susanna Wesley
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism. Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism.
Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
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96 SUSANNA, WESLEY.<br />
" Thursday, December 28th, 1710.<br />
DEAR SAMMY,<br />
" I am much better pleased with the beginning<br />
of your letter than with what you used to send<br />
me, for I do not love distance or ceremony there is<br />
;<br />
more of love and tenderness in the name of mother<br />
than in all the complimentary titles in the world.<br />
" I intend to write to your father about your coming<br />
down, but yet it would not be amiss for you tospeak<br />
of it too. Perhaps our united desires may<br />
sooner prevail upon him to grant our request, though<br />
I do not think he will be averse from it at all."<br />
This is the only time that Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>, in her<br />
brave acceptance of the inevitable, alludes to a desire<br />
to see the beloved son from whom she had been so long<br />
separated.<br />
" I am heartily glad that you have already received,<br />
and that you design again to receive, the Holy Sacrament;<br />
for there is nothing more proper or effectual<br />
for the strengthening and refreshing the mind than<br />
the frequent partaking " of that blessed ordinance.<br />
You complain that you are unstable and inconstant<br />
in the ways of virtue. Alas ! what Christian<br />
is not so too? I am sure that I, above all others,<br />
am most unfit to advise in such a case ; yet, since I<br />
cannot but speak something, since I love you as my<br />
own soul, I will endeavour to do as well as I can ;<br />
and perhaps while I write I may learn, and by instructing<br />
you I may teach myself.<br />
"I am sorry that you lie under a necessity of<br />
conversing with those that are none of the best ;<br />
but<br />
we must take the world as we find it, since it is a.
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