CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18th CENTURY - ( CHAPTER 5 ) - { PT. 3 }


 ( CHAPTER  5 )  -  { PT.  3 } - Though paid a fair salary, he was always in financial difficulties, was once in prison for debt, and in the end, left his widow and children almost destitute. When I add to this that he was not no good terms with his parishioners, and, as poor as he was, insisted on going up to London every year to attend the very unprofitable meetings of Convocation for months at a time, the reader will probably agree with me that, like too many, he was a man for more book learning and cleverness than good sense. John Wesley's mother, Susanna, was evidently a woman of extraordinary power of mind. She was the daughter of Dr. Annesley, a man well known to readers of Puritan theology as one of the chief promoters of the six-volume Morning Exercises. He was ejected from the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, in 1662. Susannah seems to have inherited from her father the sense and strong decided judgment that distinguished her character. It was undoubtedly to the influence of his mother's early training and example that John Wesley was indebted for many of his distinctive habits of mind and qualifications. Her own account of the way in which she educated all her children, in one of her letters to her son John, is enough to show that she was no ordinary woman and that her sons were not likely to turn out to be ordinary men. She wrote: None of them were taught to read until they were five years old, except Keziah, in whose case I was overruled; and she was more yeas in learning than any of the rest had been months. 

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