Susannah and Samuel

 Fifth Thursday in Lent

Lectionary texts:

OT: Isaiah 43:16-21

NT: John 12:20-26

Thanks to April for comments. I now have three who have expressed interest in the Daily Office project. I'll talk more about is tomorrow. Of the increasing number of email addresses associated with my name, It appears that the best to reach me is jchristianwilson401@gmail.com

Today we return to the series on pre- and early Methodism. John Wesley came from a clergy family. His father and paternal grandfather were Anglican priests. His maternal grandfather was a priest. His mother, had she lived in the late 20th or 21st century, would doubtless have been one. 

Although the disastrous period of Puritan rule ended in 1660, Puritans and Puritan sympathies did not go away. There would be no religious "reign of terror," as there was under Bloody Mary Tudor a century and a quarter earlier. Those with Puritan leanings were called "non-conformists." They ran heavy on Susannah's side of the family. Her maternal grandfather, "John White," (not the John White of the Lost Colony) was a Puritan. An Oxford educated solicitor (British word for lawyer), he was a member of Parliament during the Puritan rule of the Cromwells (1649-1660). He was, in fact, the chair of the "Committee for Scandalous Ministers," which involved him in the interrogation and expulsion of many Anglican ministers. Susannah's father, Samuel Annesley, also Oxford educated, was ordained in 1644. 

The Church during the Puritan period was still the Church of England. There never was and still isn't separation of Church and State in England. During the Puritan period, 1649-1660, the Puritans controlled the Church of England. Puritans ordained during that period, as was Samuel Annesley, remained ministers (they would never call themselves priests) in the Church of England. Much of the controversy involved the use of the Book of Common Prayer, which the Puritans disdained. Annesley was pastor of a country English church for eight years. After the Stuart Restoration in 1660 and the return of England to monarchy and the return of Anglicanism, Annesley was kicked out of the Anglican Church in 1662 for being a Puritan. He lived thereafter in London and became a writer of and editor of a series called The Christian Library. He died in 1694, a thorough Puritan and non-conformist.

Born in 1669, Susannah was Samuel Annesley's 25th and last child. Susannah herself would have 20 pregnancies, with eight children surviving to adulthood. That was not a bad percentage in those days. Susannah made a conscious decision in her teen years to become an Anglican. Nonetheless, her non-conformist heritage remain a part of her. 

John Wesley was fourth generation clergy on his father's side. Like his maternal grandfather, his paternal grandfather, John Westley, was a Puritan/non-conformist and anti-monarchist. He was charged with   preaching anti-Stuart sermons and other "diabolical railing." When he refused to use the BCP in his service, he was arrested and spent a year in jail. He regained and re-lost another church after his inprisonment.

His son Samuel was born in 1666. With his father's job loss and the family's resultant poverty, Samuel was able to enter Oxford only as a "servitor," that meant a poor young man who had to be a servant to another student in order to be a student himself. He did graduate and went on to earn a master's degree from Cambridge. Unlike his father, he became thoroughly Anglican and was ordained a priest in 1689. He changed his last name from Westley to Wesley. I'm not sure why. 

Three things stand out to me in John and Charles Wesley's backgrounds. First is that clergyman seemed to be a family business. Second is that every man in the Wesley background had top-notch education. Third is that the Anglican vs. Puritan/non-conformist struggle is deeply entrenched in the family. (Has it been entrenched in Methodism ever since?)

 

Susannah and Samuel's faith journeys were remarkably similar. It seemed inevitable, perhaps providential, that their paths would cross. They met in 1682. They married in 1689. He was 25; she, 22.

 

God of our faith,

We thank you for the faith of the Wesley and Annesley families and for what that faith produced, that has come down even unto us. In Christ's name. Amen.

 

Faithfully

Christian

 

Faithfully,

Christian