Arnold A. Dallimore - Susanna Wesley

Susanna Wesley

1993 by Arnold A. Dallimore

Published by Baker Books
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This edition produced in cooperation with
Evangelical Press, 12 Wooler Street, Darlington,
Co. Durham, DL1 1RQ, England. Original title: Susanna

Ebook edition created 2012

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ISBN 978-1-4412-3958-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Cover artwork: Springmaid Country Fantasies,

Fall Festival, Pattern #8716, Color 66,

Springs Industries, Inc., Retail Finished Fabrics Division.

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Contents

Preface

In writing this book it has been my aim to present a simple, readable account of the life of Susanna Wesley. I have tried to slant it especially towards women readers. I have provided a brief account of her background, her girlhood and her marriage to Samuel Wesley. I have gone on to show a number of traits of her husbands character: the two sides of his personality, his scholarly learning and clerical activities, together with his domineering manner and Susannas patience in bearing it. We also see how the fact that he was constantly in debt cast a shadow over his life and that of his family.

Since Susanna left no diary or daily journal the only record we have from her pen is found in her letters. These I have quoted frequently. But the letters of her husband and her children also shed much light on her life and therefore I have often drawn on their correspondence in the pages before us.

I have made particular use of an account that Samuel wrote depicting the first thirty years of his life and which I refer to as his Autobiography. The original is in the possession of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. It is in Samuels handwriting and is very difficult to read. I have deciphered it all and it provides facts about his youth and his life as a young man that have not been mentioned by previous writers. I express my thanks to the Bodleian Library for photocopying this document for me.

For the first time in a biography of any of the Wesleys Samuels action in leaving Susanna for nearly half a year is fully reported, as is also the way in which he forced their brilliant and beautiful daughter Hetty into marriage with an ignorant and boorish man. The former of these events is documented by Susannas letters written at the time, and the latter by Hettys letters and poems.

I express my thanks to Dr Frank Baker, the Editor in Chief of the Oxford edition of the Works of John Wesley, for the help he has given me, particularly with regard to the Hetty Wesley affair. I am grateful also to Mr D. W. Riley, M.L.A., Keeper of Printed Books at the John Rylands University, Manchester, England. This library now houses the Methodist archives, from which Mr Riley has provided me with various copies of correspondence by the Wesley family.

This book is sent forth with the desire that it may not only bring Susanna Wesley to the attention of many people, but that the story of her life may move many to copy her example of prayerfulness, patience and piety.

Arnold A. Dallimore
Cottam, Ontario, Canada

A portrait of Susanna Wesley which hangs in the Epworth Old Rectory

A Promising Girlhood

How many children does Doctor Annesley have?

I am not sure, but it is either two dozen or a quarter of a hundred.

This conversation took place in London in 1669, following the christening of yet another child recently born into the Annesley home. And the latter estimate proved correct; this was indeed the twenty-fifth child to take its place in the doctors family.

The future of this infant was far from ordinary. This little one, a girl, was to have a very important part in the history of the church. Given the name Susanna, she would grow up to marry Samuel Wesley and to bear nineteen children of her own. Two of her sons would rise to great prominence in the founding of Methodism and would leave mankind good reason to know their accomplishments and to remember their names, both in the field of evangelism and in the writing of hymns, for they were none other than John and Charles Wesley.

Susanna manifestly inherited many of the qualities possessed by her father beside the tendency to produce a large family. The Reverend Samuel Annesley, M.A., LL.D., was a man of noteworthy character. Born of devout Puritan parents, he stated that he was so early instructed in the way of salvation that he could not remember a time when he was conscious of not knowing the Lord. At the age of five he began to read twenty chapters of the Bible a day and this practice he continued till the close of his life. Early in his teens he entered Oxford University and upon graduating in 1644 he was ordained and became the pastor of a church in the county of Kent.

He stayed with them till there was evidence of a widespread turning to better practices, when he moved to London.

There he faced still greater difficulties. During the 1640s England had endured a civil war, with, on the one hand, the Royalist army fighting for the king and the Church of England, and on the other, the army of the Parliamentarians, demanding a Puritan form of government. The Parliamentarians, under Oliver Cromwell, were victorious and the king, Charles I, was captured, tried and beheaded. A form of peace was then established, but could not destroy the bitter hostility in mens hearts throughout the nation.

After a few years the Royalists regained power and King Charles II acceded to the throne. In 1662, in the hope of stamping out all traces of Puritanism, Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity. It commanded all ministers to conform to the beliefs and practices of the Church of England. Some 2,000 refused to submit to this edict and, in what became known as the Great Ejection, these men, called nonconformists or Dissenters, were driven out from their positions in the universities, from their churches and from their parsonages. They were forbidden to preach, and were turned out with their wives and families, often to face homelessness and utter poverty. The authorities kept a strict watch on their activities and the slightest attempt to hold a religious service could bring a man a heavy fine, or several years in a foul jail, or banishment to semi-slavery in a foreign land. It was as a result of this law that John Bunyan suffered his now celebrated imprisonment.