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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42 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
heir. Whether they did well in driving a prince from<br />
his hereditary throne, I leave<br />
to their own consciences<br />
to determine ; though I cannot tell how to think that<br />
a King of England can ever be accountable to his<br />
subjects for any mal-administration or abuse of power.<br />
But as he derives his power from God, so to Him only<br />
he must answer for his using it. But still, I make<br />
great<br />
difference between those who entered into a<br />
confederacy against their Prince, and those who,<br />
knowing nothing of the contrivance, and so consequently<br />
not consenting to it, only submitted to the<br />
present Government, which seems to me the law of<br />
the English nation, and the duty of private Christians,<br />
and the case with the generality of this people. But<br />
whether the praying for a usurper, and vindicating his<br />
usurpations after he has the throne, be not participating<br />
his sins, is easily determined/'<br />
It appears, also, that when a national fast day was<br />
proclaimed and observed, Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> stayed at home<br />
instead of going to church, and she justifies her action<br />
thus<br />
"<br />
: Since I am not satisfied of the lawfulness of<br />
the war, I cannot beg a blessing on our arms till I<br />
can have the opinion of one wiser, and a more competent<br />
judge than myself, in this point, viz., whether a<br />
private person that had no hand in the beginning of<br />
the war, but did always disapprove of it, may, notwithstanding,<br />
implore God's blessing on it, and pray<br />
for the good success of those arms which were taken<br />
up, I think, unlawfully. In the meantime I think it<br />
my duty, since I cannot join in public worship, tospend<br />
the time others take in that in humbling myself<br />
before God for my own and the nation's sins ;<br />
and in<br />
beseeching Him to spare that guilty land wherein are<br />
many thousands that are, notwithstanding, compara-
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