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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160 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
afterwards he was very free, and expressed great kindness<br />
to them all.<br />
" He was strangely scandalised at the poverty of our<br />
furniture, and much more at the meanness of the children's<br />
habits. He always talked more freely with your<br />
sisters of our circumstances than to me, and told them<br />
he wondered what his brother had done with his<br />
income, for 'twas visible he had not spent<br />
it in furnishing<br />
his house or clothing his family.<br />
" We had a little talk together sometimes, but it was<br />
not often we could hold a private conference ;<br />
and he<br />
was very shy of speaking anything relating to the<br />
children before your father, or indeed of any other<br />
matter. I informed him, as far as I handsomely could,<br />
of our losses, &c., for I was afraid that he should think<br />
that I was about to beg of him ;<br />
but the girls (with<br />
whom he had many private discourses), I believe, told!<br />
him everything they could think " on.<br />
He was particularly pleased with Patty [who was<br />
then twenty-five years old] ; and, one morning, before<br />
Mr. <strong>Wesley</strong> came down, he asked me if I was willing<br />
to let Patty go and stay a year or two with him in<br />
'<br />
London. Sister,' says he,<br />
I have endeavoured<br />
already to make one of your children easy while she<br />
lives ;<br />
and if<br />
you choose to trust Patty with me, I will<br />
endeavour to make her so too/ Whatever others may<br />
think, I thought this a generous offer ;<br />
and the more<br />
so, because he had done so much for Sukey and Hetty.<br />
I expressed my gratitude as well as I could, and would<br />
have had him speak to your father, but he would not<br />
himself he left that to me ;<br />
nor did he ever mention<br />
it to Mr. <strong>Wesley</strong><br />
till the evening before he left us.<br />
He always behaved himself very decently at family<br />
prayers, and, in your father's absence, said grace for us
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