Susanna Wesley: Spiritual Guide Par Excellence, Part I

Susanna Wesley: Spiritual Guide Par Excellence, Part I

We know of Susanna Wesley (1669-1742) because of her famous sons, John and Charles. Yet she is a spiritual guide in her own right. Susanna was the youngest daughter of twenty-five children of Dr. Samuel Annesley. A minister living in London, he trained his daughter in biblical and classical languages as well as other arts and sciences. A man ahead of his times, he notes that, “I have often thought it as one of the most barbarous of customs in the world, considering us a civilized and Christian Country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.[i]

Susanna married Samuel Wesley, a minister in the Church of England, and moved to his rural parish at Epworth. She bore nineteen children, only nine of whom lived to adulthood. Her husband was known to be difficult to get along with because he ruled with an iron hand. As a result, parishioners and townspeople alike disliked the family. At one point he was sent to prison for failure to pay a debt owed to one of his parishioners.[ii]

Of her marriage, Susanna ruefully records, “Since I’m willing to let him quietly enjoy his opinions, he ought not to deprive me of my little liberty of conscience. . . . I think we are not likely to live happily together. . . . It is a misfortune peculiar to our family that he and I seldom think alike”[iii]

Motherly Spiritual Direction: Theological Depth and Relational Focus

Like many such marriages, their distance resulted in her focusing her feminine gifts on her children. John Wesley requested, in adulthood, a letter from his mother detailing her methodical system of child rearing. On July 24, 1732, she penned such a letter. In it she describes not only her method, but her theology behind her practice. “As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their after wretchedness and irreligion; whatever checks and modifies it promotes their future happiness and piety.”[iv]

Therefore, “in order to form the minds of children, the first thing to do is to conquer their will, and bring them to an obedient temper. To inform the understanding is a work of time, and must with children proceed by slow degrees, as they are able to bear it; but the subjecting the will is a thing which must be done at once, and the sooner the better; for by neglecting timely correction, they will contract a stubbornness and obstinacy which are hardly ever after conquered, and never without using such severity as would be as painful to me as to the child.”[v] According to Susanna, parental spiritual discipline eschews the world’s esteem which they grant for indulgence. To her, it is only the cruelest parents who permit their children to develop habits they know must be afterward broken.

Though strong in disciplining the will, Susanna equally offers forgiveness and encouragement. “If they amended, they should never be upbraided with it afterward. . . . Every single act of obedience . . . should always be commended, and frequently rewarded. . . . That if ever any child performed an act of obedience, or did anything with an intention to please, though the performance was not well, yet the obedience and intention should be kindly accepted, and the child with sweetness directed how to do better for the future.”[vi]

Additionally, her focus on the will in no way suggests that Susanna’s parental spiritual guidance minimized the life of the mind. She, rare in her era, taught all of her children to read by age five. More than that, in a letter to her daughter, Susan, Susanna produced a lengthy treatise on parental spiritual instruction. “My tenderest regard is for your immortal soul, and for its spiritual happiness; which regard I cannot better express, than by endeavoring to instill into your mind those principles of knowledge and virtue that are absolutely necessary in order to your leading a good life here, which is the only thing that can infallibly secure your happiness hereafter.”[vii]

For Susanna, we should never derive these principles from some amalgamation of self-help tenets. Instead, for her we base all spiritual training on the chief articles of the Christian faith, taking for her ground-work, the Apostles Creed. Having introduced the necessity of laying a solid theological foundation, Susanna then exegetes each phrase of the Creed. Page after page with theological precision, she models the depth of theological training, biblical teaching, and spiritual direction that every Christian mother ought to pass on to her children.[viii] When Christians today question the relevance of theological depth, they need to ask and answer the question, “What factors produced the two great church leaders John and Charles Wesley?”

While the first factor was theologically precise teaching, this should not cause us to think that Susanna was content with “head knowledge.” She taught her children that the Creed “briefly comprehended your duty to God, yourself, and your neighbor.”[ix] The purpose of biblical truth is to provide us with a renewed mind that leads to loving God and loving others. As a minister, John wrote to his mother about the definition of love. On May 14, 1727, she responds. “Suffer now a word of advice. However curious you may be in searching into the nature, or in distinguishing the properties, of the passions or virtues of human kind, for your own private satisfaction, be very cautious in giving nice distinctions in public assemblies; for it does not answer the true end of preaching, which is to mend men’s lives, and not fill their heads with unprofitable speculations.”[x] Clearly, we need truth—theological truth, but never truth for truth’s sake, but truth for love’s sake.

The first two factors that produced the two great church leaders John and Charles Wesley are theologically precise teaching and truth related to daily life relationships. To these, Susanna models two more parental discipleship methods: spiritual conversations and spiritual narratives. After a fire destroyed their home and dispersed the family until a new home could be found, Susanna wrote to her daughter Sukey on January 13, 1710. “Since our misfortunes have separated us from each other, and we can no longer enjoy the opportunities we once had of conversing together, I can no other way discharge the duty of a parent, or comply with my inclination of doing you all the good I can, but by writing. You know very well how I love you.”[xi] What is the duty of a mother? To do all the good for a child she can. How does a mother fulfill her duty? By lovingly conversing about life in light of God’s Word (the content of the rest of her letter).

To spiritual conversations Susanna adds spiritual narratives. On October 11, 1709, she wrote to her son Samuel, saying, “There is nothing I now desire to live for but to do some small service to my children; that as I have brought them into the world, I may, if it please God, be an instrument of doing good to their souls.” And how would she provide her soul care ministry? “I had been several years collecting from my little reading, but chiefly from my own observation and experience, some things which I hoped might be useful to you all. I had begun to collect and form all into a little manual, wherein I designed you should have seen what were the particular reasons which prevailed on me to believe the being of a God, and the grounds of natural religion, together with the motives that induced me to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, under which was comprehended my own private reasons for the truth of revealed religion.”[xii]

What if every mother did the same? What if every mother maintained Susanna’s high view of her high calling? A mother can make a great difference if her confidence in God’s work in her life leads her to “dare” to produce for her family her “faith history,” her “spiritual narrative.”

[i]Wallace, “Susanna Wesley’s Spirituality,” 163.
[ii]Tucker, Private Lives of Pastors’ Wives, 53.
[iii]Peterson, 25 Surprising Marriages, 253.
[iv]Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family, 327.
[v]Ibid., 326.
[vi]Ibid., 329.
[vii]Ibid., 347.
[viii]Ibid., 347-376
[ix]Ibid., 347.
[x]Ibid., 337.
[xi]Ibid., 347.
[xii]Ibid., 343.