A Famous Mother

A Famous Mother

Just one thing was missing.

ONE OF the most famous mothers of all time was Susanna Wesley. Among her nineteen children were John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna was born in 1669 or 1670, the twenty-fifth and youngest child of Dr. Samuel Annesley, a magazine editor and pastor in London who was a leader of the Dissenters (those who refused to conform to the Anglican Church).

Young Susanna was very bright and educated herself reading the many books in her father’s house. She listened to many debates in her home on the differences between the Church of England and dissenting churches like her father’s. Always of her own opinion, Susanna became convinced that dissent was wrong, and to her family’s great surprise she left her father’s church at the age of thirteen and joined the Church of England.

It was also at the age of thirteen that Susanna met her future husband, Samuel Wesley. Like Susanna, Samuel had grown up in a dissenting family but had disagreed with them and joined the Church of England. Samuel married Susanna a few months after he graduated from Oxford. He was twenty-six, and Susanna was nineteen.

Samuel was ordained in the Anglican Church and eventually became pastor in the parish of Epworth. Susanna gave birth to a baby a year, but by early 1702 the Wesleys had but one surviving son and five daughters. Eight children had died.

Both Samuel and Susanna were dogmatic, stubborn, and strong willed, with deeply held political allegiances. Both were Tories, but Samuel was an enthusiastic supporter of King William III while Susanna’s sympathies were with James II who was in exile in France. When Samuel interceded for “our sovereign lord, King William” in evening prayers, Susanna apparently silently substituted James for William.

When word came that James II had died in France, Susanna stopped saying amen at the end of the prayer. When Samuel learned the reason why, he told her, “You and I must part: for if we have two kings, we must have two beds.” He moved into another room of the house and finally went to London, saying he would never return.

That could have been the end of their family except for another change in royalty. King William died in March and was succeeded by Queen Anne, who had the loyalty of both Wesleys. Samuel then returned from London, but they continued to sleep in separate rooms. It took a fire in July 1702 that burned three quarters of their home to bring Samuel back to his senses and to his wife. They began sharing the same bed in August, and on June 17, 1703, John Wesley, their fifteenth child, was born. He owed his very existence to a fire and to the crowning of Queen Anne. Charles Wesley was born four years later, the eighteenth child.

Susanna Wesley’s sons, John and Charles, both personally trusted Christ in 1738 and went on to found what became the Methodist Church. Susanna, however, was critical of their conversions.

Then on September 3, 1739, John Wesley had a conversation with his mother that both surprised and thrilled him. She told him that until recently she had never understood that a person could experience the forgiveness of sins in this life or that God’s Spirit could witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Then she said, “Two or three weeks ago, while my son Hall was pronouncing those words in delivering the cup to me, ‘The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee,’ the words struck through my heart, and I knew God for Christ’s sake, had forgiven me all my sins.”

Three years later Susanna Wesley died, sharing the same assurance of sins forgiven as her sons.

Reflection

All of Susanna Wesley’s family and friends assumed that she was a Christian, but in fact, until near the end of her life, she had been very religious but had never experienced the personal forgiveness of sins. Have you personally committed your life to Jesus Christ, or are you just being religious, as Susanna was for so many years?

His Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:16