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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206 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
let me rather grow in grace and in the knowledge of<br />
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. I know<br />
not what other opinion people may have of human<br />
nature, but, for my part,<br />
I think that without the<br />
grace of God we are utterly incapable of thinking,<br />
speaking, or doing anything good therefore, if in any<br />
:<br />
part of our life we have been enabled to perform anything<br />
good, we should give God the glory. If we have<br />
not improved the talents given us, the fault is our own.<br />
I find this is a way of talking much used among this<br />
people, which has much offended me ;<br />
and I have often<br />
wished they would talk less of themselves and more of<br />
God. I often hear loud complaints of sin, &c., but<br />
rarely, very rarely, any word of praise and thanksgiving<br />
to our dear Lord, or acknowledgment of His<br />
Infinite . . ."<br />
The remaining sentences are lost, and, as they probably<br />
bore on the kind of persons who frequented the<br />
Foundry and its services, it is a pity.<br />
It was about six months after the date of this letter,<br />
early in March 1741, that Kezia <strong>Wesley</strong> died at Bexley<br />
at the age of thirty-two. It is<br />
supposed that she never<br />
quite recovered the shock of finding that <strong>Wesley</strong> Hall<br />
had played with her youthful affections as a mere<br />
pastime while he was pledged to her sister Martha.<br />
She was the youngest, born just after her mother had<br />
gone through the terrible ordeal of fright and danger<br />
at the Epworth fire. She had endured many privations<br />
herself in her youth, all of which helped to account for<br />
her delicacy ;<br />
but hearts do count for something in<br />
women's lives, and an unhappy attachment often produces<br />
a want of physical rallying power, especially in<br />
one who has no very strong ties to life.<br />
Charles seems
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