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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'60 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
never intoxicated ;<br />
but this I look on as the highest<br />
kind of the sin of intemperance.<br />
" But this is not, nor, I hope, ever will be your<br />
case. Two glasses cannot possibly hurt you, provided<br />
they contain no more than those commonly used ;<br />
nor<br />
would I have you concerned though you find yourself<br />
warmed and cheerful after drinking them for it is<br />
;<br />
a necessary effect of such liquors to refresh and increase<br />
the spirits,<br />
and certainly the Divine Being will<br />
never be displeased at the innocent<br />
satisfaction of our<br />
regular appetites.<br />
" But then have a care ; stay at the third glass.<br />
Consider you have an obligation to strict temperance<br />
which all have not I mean your designation to holy<br />
orders. Remember, under the Jewish economy it<br />
was ordained by God Himself that the snuffers of the<br />
Temple should be perfect gold ;<br />
from which we may<br />
infer that those who are admitted to serve at the<br />
altar, a great part of whose office it is to reprove<br />
others, ought themselves to be most pure, and free<br />
from all scandalous actions ;<br />
and if others are temperate,<br />
they ought to be abstemious.<br />
" Here happened last Thursday a very sad accident.<br />
You may remember one Robert Darwin, of this town.<br />
This man was at Bawtry fair, where he got drunk;<br />
and riding homeward down a hill, his horse came<br />
down with him, and he, having no sense to guide himself,<br />
fell with his face to the ground and put his neck<br />
out of joint. Those with him immediately pulled it<br />
in again, and he lived till next day; but he never spake<br />
more. His face was torn all to pieces, one of his<br />
eyes beat out, and his under- lip cut off, his nose<br />
broken down, and in short he was one of the most<br />
dreadful examples of the severe justice<br />
of God that I
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