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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DISAPPOINTMENTS AND PERPLEXITIES. 131<br />
when by your last unkind letters she perceived that<br />
all her hopes in you were frustrated, rashly threw<br />
herself away upon a man (if a man he may be called<br />
who is little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness)<br />
that is not only her plague,<br />
but a constant<br />
affliction to the family. Oh, Sir !<br />
oh, brother !<br />
happy,<br />
thrice happy are you, happy is my sister, that buried<br />
your children in infancy, secure from temptation,<br />
secure from guilt, secure from want or shame, or loss<br />
of friends !<br />
They are safe beyond the reach of pain<br />
or sense of misery ; being gone hence, nothing can<br />
touch them further. Believe me, Sir, it is better to<br />
mourn ten children dead than one living, and I have<br />
buried many. But here I must pause awhile.<br />
" The other children, though wanting neither industry<br />
nor capacity for business, we cannot put to any,<br />
by reason we have neither money nor friends to assist<br />
us in doing it ;<br />
nor is there a gentleman's family near<br />
us in which we can place them, unless as common<br />
servants, and that even yourself would not think them<br />
fit for, if you saw them ;<br />
so that they must . stay at<br />
home, while they have a home, and how long will<br />
that be ? Innumerable are other uneasinesses, too<br />
tedious to mention, insomuch that, what with my own<br />
indisposition, my master's infirmities, the absence of<br />
and the<br />
my eldest, the ruin of my second daughter,<br />
inconceivable distress of all the rest, I have enough<br />
to turn a stronger head than mine. And were it not<br />
that God supports, and by His omnipotent goodness<br />
often totally suspends<br />
all sense of worldly things, I<br />
could not sustain the weight many days, perhaps<br />
hours. But even in this low ebb of fortune, I am<br />
not without some kind interval. Unspeakable are<br />
the blessings of privacy and leisure, when the mind<br />
9 *
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