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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46 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
riding before him on the same horse, and speedily<br />
won the favour of his new tutors and governors.<br />
He had also several friends in London his ; paternal<br />
grandmother was still alive, and his uncle Matthew<br />
was a surgeon and apothecary in good circumstances,<br />
while another uncle, Timothy <strong>Wesley</strong>, and an aunt,<br />
Mrs. Elizabeth Dyer, his father's only sister, also<br />
lived in the city. They all appear to have shown the<br />
boy the kindness to be expected by a nephew,<br />
and were most likely proud of his talents and rapid<br />
progress. His mother's aniious affection for him<br />
was so great that she devoted many hours, and also<br />
many sheets of foolscap, to writing him a series of<br />
letters, which were neither more nor less than treatises<br />
on Revelation and the law of reason. The first<br />
is dated March llth, 1704, and is very long, and, to<br />
of home<br />
say the truth, dry, unrelieved by a scrap<br />
news or gossip. She, no doubt, in writing<br />
it and<br />
successive epistles,<br />
fulfilled what she felt to be a<br />
conscientious duty, but was aware that they were<br />
beyond the boy's comprehension at that period, as she<br />
told him to keep them till he was older and better able<br />
to understand them. A letter written towards the close<br />
and better suited<br />
of the summer seems more natural,<br />
to a school-boy's comprehension<br />
:<br />
" DEAR SAMMY,<br />
" Epworth, August 4th, 1704.<br />
" I have been ill a great while, but am now, I<br />
thank God, well recovered. I thought to have been<br />
with you ere this, but I doubt if I shall see you this<br />
summer; therefore send me word particularly what<br />
you want.<br />
" I would ere now have finished<br />
my discourse begun<br />
so long ago, if I had enjoyed more health ;<br />
but I hope
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