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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144 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
incident to men here and hereafter proceed from themselves.<br />
The case stands thus : This life is a state of<br />
probation, wherein eternal happiness or misery are<br />
proposed to our choice ;<br />
the one as a reward of a<br />
virtuous, the other as a consequence of a vicious<br />
life. Man is a compound being, a strange mixture<br />
of spirit<br />
and matter, or rather a creature wherein<br />
those opposite principles are united without mixture,<br />
yet each principle,<br />
after an incomprehensible manner,<br />
subject to the influence of the other. The true<br />
happiness of man, under this consideration, consists<br />
in a due subordination of the inferior to the superior<br />
powers, of the animal to the rational nature, and of<br />
both to God.<br />
" This was his original righteousness and happiness<br />
that was lost in Adam ;<br />
and to restore man to his<br />
happiness by the recovery of his original righteousness<br />
was certainly God's design in admitting him to the<br />
state of trial in the world, and of our redemption by<br />
Jesus Christ. And, surely this was a design truly<br />
-worthy of God, and the greatest instance of mercy<br />
that even omnipotent goodness could exhibit to us.<br />
" As the happiness of man consists in a due subordination<br />
of<br />
the inferior to the superior powers, &c., so<br />
the inversion of<br />
misery. There is in us all a natural propension towards<br />
the body and the world. The beauty, pleasures, and<br />
ease of the body strangely charm us ;<br />
the wealth and<br />
this order is the true source of human<br />
honours of the world allure us; and all, under the<br />
management of a subtle malicious adversary, give a<br />
prodigious force to present things ;<br />
and if the animal<br />
life once get the ascendant of our reason, it is the<br />
greatest folly imaginable, because he seeks it where<br />
has not designed he shall ever find it. But this
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