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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182 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
CHAPTER XIV.<br />
WIDOWHOOD.<br />
THERE was nothing to detain Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> at Epworth<br />
after her few affairs were settled and her sons had returned<br />
to Tiverton and Oxford. Samuel took Kezia home<br />
with him, and the mother took up her abode for a season<br />
with her eldest daughter at Gainsborough. It was<br />
no doubt a comfort to her to be with Emilia as the<br />
attachment between them had always been very strong,<br />
and Martha, the other daughter, who was particularly<br />
devoted to her mother, was in London, and preparing<br />
to be married. The man to whom she was engaged<br />
was Mr. "<strong>Wesley</strong>, or Westley Hall, the friend and<br />
disciple of her brothers at Oxford, who was mentioned<br />
in some of Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s letters to her sons. Martha<br />
first met him while keeping her uncle Matthew's<br />
house in London, where he proposed to her and was<br />
accepted, and he afterwards accompanied John and<br />
Charles to Epworth, where, curiously enough, no one<br />
seems to have known anything about his engagement,<br />
and he made diligent love to Kezia. After winning her<br />
affections, he pretended to have a vision from heaven<br />
forbidding the match, and, probably being quite aware<br />
of Mr. Matthew <strong>Wesley</strong>'s kind intentions towards his
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