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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CHAPTER II.<br />
YOUTH AND MARRIAGE.<br />
WHATEVER accomplishments <strong>Susanna</strong> Annesley may<br />
have lacked, she was perfect mistress of English undetiled,<br />
had a ready flow of words, an abundance of<br />
common sense, and that gift of letter- writing which<br />
is supposed to have vanished out of the world<br />
at the introduction of the Penny Post. She probably<br />
had sufficient acquaintance with the French<br />
language to enable her to read easy authors but at an<br />
;<br />
age when a girl of her years and capacity ought to<br />
have been reading literature, she appears to have been<br />
studying the religious questions of the day. It is true<br />
that they were uppermost in all minds, but it is<br />
equally true that her father, Dr. Annesley, had laid<br />
controversy aside and did not add a single pamphlet to<br />
the vast army of them which invaded the world at that<br />
epoch. He was a liberal and a large-minded man, and<br />
no stronger proof of it can be adduced than that his<br />
youngest daughter, before she was thirteen, was allowed<br />
so much liberty of conscience, that she deliberately<br />
chose and preferred attaching herself to the Church<br />
of England rather than remaining among the Nonconformists,<br />
with whom her father had cast in his lot.
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