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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226 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
invariably gives it away to some person poorer than<br />
herself."<br />
In 1747 Mr. Hall became so incensed during one of<br />
John's visits to Salisbury, probably by his remonstrances,<br />
that he turned both him and Martha out of<br />
doors. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Hall left him, and<br />
wrote to explain the reason why<br />
:<br />
" Being at last convinced that I cannot possibly<br />
oblige you any longer by anything I can say or do,<br />
I have for some time determined to rid you of so<br />
useless a burden, as soon as it should please Grod<br />
to give me an opportunity. If you<br />
have so much<br />
humanity left for a wife who has lived so many years<br />
with you as to allow anything towards a maintenance,<br />
I will thank you/'<br />
She is thought to have forgiven and returned to him<br />
after this, but only to leave him again and seek John's<br />
protection at the Foundry. That she harboured no<br />
unkind feelings against her faithless husband, and<br />
regarded the separation only as temporary,<br />
is shown<br />
in another letter.<br />
" Though I should have been very glad to have heard<br />
from you, yet I cannot wonder at<br />
your not answering<br />
my letter, seeing I not only left you a second time,<br />
but desired conditions which, I fear, you do not find<br />
yourself at all disposed to grant. Indeed, I am<br />
obliged to plead guilty to the charge, and, as I look<br />
upon you as the sole judge, I shall make no appeal<br />
from that sentence; only I desire leave to speak a few<br />
words before you pass it.<br />
You may remember, whenever<br />
I was angry enough to talk of leaving you, you<br />
could never work me up to such a height as to make<br />
me say I would never return/'<br />
Unlike the majority of badly-treated women, Mrs.
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