Hymn Writers of the Church

Wesley, Samuel, the son of Rev. John Wesley and the father of John and Charles Wesley, was born in 1662. While an academy student Wesley expected to enter the ministry of the Dissenters. The change in his opinions was a little remarkable. Some one had written severely against the Dissenters, and Mr. Samuel Wesley was appointed to reply. This led him to a course of reading which in the end resulted differently from what was expected. He left the Dissenters and attached himself to the Established Church. Entering Exeter College, Oxford, as a servitor, he was graduated in 1688. Ordained soon after, he served as curate in several places. In 1696 he dedicated his Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem, to Queen Mary, who presented him with the living at Epworth, where he remained until his death, April 22, 1735. In 1689, he married Susanna Annesley, whose fame has gone wherever Christian motherhood is honored. They had nineteen children, nine of whom died in infancy. He published The Old and New Testaments Attempted in Verse in 1716, and had just finished at the time of his death a volume of learned Dissertations on the Book of Job. His oldest son, Samuel Wesley, Jr., was also a hymn writer of some note. On December 1, 1730, he wrote the following: "I hear my son John has the honor of being styled 'the father of the holy club.' If it be so, I must be the grandfather of it; and I need not say that I had rather any of my sons should be so dignified and distinguished than to have the title of 'His Holiness.'"