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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384 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
and infirm mother lived. Then he was asked whether<br />
her consent to his going would alter the case, so he<br />
went down to Gainsborough and spent three days with<br />
Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> and Emilia, resolving in his own mind to<br />
accept his mother's decision as the voice of Providence.<br />
Her reply to what he had to say to her was, " Had I<br />
twenty sons, I should rejoice that they were all so<br />
employed, though I should never see them more/'<br />
This, of course, was conclusive ;<br />
Charles was at once<br />
ordained, taking deacon's and priest's orders within a<br />
few days on account of the exigence of the circumstances,<br />
and with two Oxford friends, Mr. Ingham and<br />
Mr. Delamotte, they started in faith and not without<br />
a spice of the love of adventure and change of scene<br />
natural to men of their age. They<br />
all sailed from<br />
Gravesend, in the good ship Symmonds, on the 14th<br />
of October 1735, about six months after the break-up<br />
of the home at Epworth.<br />
It is not to be supposed that Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> did not<br />
exchange many letters with her sons on the subject,<br />
but only one has been preserved. The following short<br />
epistle was probably her first after they sailed :<br />
" Gainsborough,<br />
" DEAR SON, November 27th, 1735.<br />
God is<br />
Being itself, the 1 AM, and therefore<br />
must necessarily be the Supreme Good ! He<br />
is so infinitely<br />
blessed, that every perception<br />
of His blissful<br />
presence imparts a glad vitality to the heart. Every<br />
degree of approach towards Him is, in the same proportion,<br />
a degree of happiness ;<br />
and I often think that<br />
were He always present to our mind, as we are present<br />
to Him, there would be no pain nor sense of misery.<br />
I have long since chose him for my only Good, my All,
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