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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178 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
juncture I cannot conceive. But this is none of my<br />
business.<br />
" You want no direction from me how to employ<br />
your time. I thank God for his inspiring you with a<br />
resolution of heing faithful in improving that important<br />
talent committed to your trust. It would be of no<br />
service to you to know in any particular what I do or<br />
what<br />
#*.#<br />
method in examination or anything else I observe.<br />
I am superannuated, and do not now live as I would,<br />
but as I can. I cannot observe order, or think consistently,<br />
formerly. When I have a lucid interval I<br />
aim at improving it but alas ! it is but<br />
; aiming.<br />
" But I am got towards the end of my paper before<br />
I am aware. One word more, and I have done. As<br />
your course of life is austere, and your diet low, so<br />
the passions, as far as they depend on the body, will<br />
be low too. Therefore you must not judge of your<br />
interior state by your not feeling great fervours of<br />
spirit and extraordinary agitations, as plentiful weeping,<br />
&c., but rather by firm adherence of your will<br />
to God. If upon examination you perceive that you<br />
still choose Him for your only good, that your spirit<br />
(to use a Scripture phrase) cleaveth stedfastly to Him,<br />
'<br />
follow Mr. Baxter's advice and you will be easy<br />
: Put<br />
your souls, with all your sins and dangers, and all their<br />
interests, into the hand of Jesus Christ your Saviour,<br />
and trust them wholly with Him by a resolved faith.<br />
It is He that hath purchased them, and therefore<br />
loveth them. It is He that is the owner of them, by<br />
right of redemption and it is now become His own<br />
;<br />
interest, even for the success and honour of His<br />
redemption, to save them/<br />
" When I begin to write to you, I think I do not
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