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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16 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
Fathers, but also of every other art that comes within<br />
those called liberal. His zeal and ability in giving<br />
spiritual directions were great.<br />
With invincible<br />
power he confirmed the wavering and confuted heretics.<br />
Beneath the genial warmth of his wit the most<br />
barren subject became fertile and divertive. His style<br />
was sweet and manly, soft without satiety, and learned<br />
without pedantry. His temper and conversation were<br />
affable. His compassion for the sufferings of his<br />
fellow-creatures was as great as his learning and his<br />
parts. Were it possible for any man to act the part<br />
of a universal priest, he would certainly deem it his<br />
duty to take care of the spiritual good of all mankind.<br />
In all his writings and actions he evinced a deep concern<br />
for all that bear the glorious image of their<br />
Maker, and was so apostolical in his spirit, that pains,<br />
labours, watchings, and prayers were far more delightful<br />
to him than honours to the ambitious, wealth to the<br />
miser, or pleasure to the voluptuous."<br />
Looking back at this distance of time on Samuel<br />
<strong>Wesley</strong>'s literary work, it is evident that he was a<br />
learned theologian, and had the gift of fluent versification.<br />
His mind and style were narrowed by being<br />
continually bent on controversial theology, and he<br />
wrote so much and so rapidly in one groove, in order<br />
to earn the wherewithal to bring up his large family,<br />
that he never attained the high standard of which his<br />
youth gave such fair promise. But he was a good<br />
man, and a faithful pastor of souls in the obscure<br />
corner of Lincolnshire where his lot was afterwards<br />
cast ; although, had he remained in London, it is probable<br />
that he would have come more to the front,<br />
and have become one of the shining intellectual lights<br />
of his day.
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