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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202 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
And why<br />
is it so ? Because I want faith. God is an<br />
omnipresent unchangeable God, in whom is no variableness<br />
neither shadow of turning; the fault is in<br />
myself, and I attribute all mistakes in judgment and<br />
all errors in practice to want of faith in the blessed<br />
Jesus. Oh, my dear, when I consider the dignity of<br />
His person, the perfection of His purity, the greatness<br />
of His sufferings, but above all His boundless love, I<br />
am astonished and utterly confounded ;<br />
I am lost in<br />
thought. I fall into nothing before Him Oh, how<br />
!<br />
inexcusable is that person who has knowledge of these<br />
things, and yet remains poor and low in faith and love.<br />
I speak as one guilty in this matter. I have been prevented<br />
from finishing my letter. I complained I had<br />
none to converse with me on spiritual things, but for<br />
these several days I have had the conversation of many<br />
good Christians, who have refreshed in some measure<br />
my fainting spirits<br />
and though ; they hindered my<br />
writing, yet it was a pleasing and I hope not an unprofitable<br />
interruption they gave me. I hope we shall<br />
shortly speak face to face and I shall ; then, if God<br />
permit, impart my thoughts more fully. But then,<br />
alas ! when you come, your brother leaves me. Yet<br />
that is the will of God, in whose blessed service you<br />
are engaged, who has hitherto blessed your labours, and<br />
That He may continue so to<br />
preserved your persons.<br />
prosper your work, and protect you both from evil, and<br />
give you strength and courage to preach the true gospel<br />
in opposition to the united prayers of evil men and evil<br />
angels, is the hearty prayer of, dear Charles,<br />
" Your loving mother,<br />
" SUSANNA WESLEV."<br />
About this time Emilia <strong>Wesley</strong>, who had been for a
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