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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108 SU8AXNA WESLEY.<br />
sermon read, which is surely more acceptable to<br />
Almighty God.<br />
" Another reason for what I do is that I have no<br />
other way of conversing with this people, and therefore<br />
have no other way of doing them good but ; by<br />
this I have an opportunity of exercising the greatest<br />
and noblest charity, that is, charity to their souls.<br />
" Some families who seldom went to church, now<br />
go constantly, and one person who had not been<br />
there for seven years is now prevailed upon to go with<br />
the rest.<br />
" There are many other good consequences of this<br />
meeting which I have not time to mention. Now, I<br />
beseech you, weigh<br />
all these things in an impartial<br />
balance : on the one side the honour of Almighty God,<br />
the doing much good to many souls, and the friendship<br />
of the best among whom we live ;<br />
on the other<br />
(if folly, impiety, and vanity may abide in the scale<br />
against so ponderous a weight), the senseless objections<br />
of a few scandalous persons, laughing at us, and censuring<br />
us as precise and hypocritical ;<br />
and when you<br />
have duly considered all things, let me have your positive<br />
determination.<br />
" I need not tell<br />
you the consequences if you determine<br />
to put an end to our meeting. You may easily<br />
perceive what prejudice it may raise in the minds<br />
of these people against Inman especially, who has had<br />
so little wit as to speak publicly against<br />
it. I can<br />
now keep them to the church ;<br />
but if it be laid aside<br />
I doubt they will never go to hear him more, at<br />
least<br />
those who came from the lower end of the town.<br />
But if this be continued till<br />
you return, which now<br />
will not be long, it<br />
may please God that their hearts<br />
may be so changed by that time that they may love
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