The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Methodism; Wesley, John, 1703-1791
England, wished her to live with him; but to this she objected. She
had now arrived at the age of thirty; she was seized with illness in
the family where she was a servant; and was sent to the hospital. On
her dismissal, she found herself in the greatest straits; and had, by
her own labour, to maintain both herself and her mother. This was in
1754. She went to Spitalfields church, and professed to find peace with
God, while Wesley was administering the sacrament. Ryan wrote to her,
wishing her to join him in America; but, though she had three husbands
living, she now preferred not to live with any of them. Her early
religious experience, as published by Wesley in the _Magazine_ for
1779, is wild and whimsical, rather than intelligent and devout.
Sarah Ryan was now resident with Mary Clarke, in a small house, in
Christopher Alley, Moorfields. Here a select few of the more lively
London Methodists held their meetings. Among others, Miss Bosanquet,
afterwards Mrs. Fletcher, now a young girl of about sixteen years of
age, was accustomed to make this her home. Here she met with Sarah
Ryan and Sarah Crosby, both of them boarders with Mary Clarke. Such a
conclave of Methodist females attracted Wesley’s notice; and, about two
years after her conversion, that is in 1757, he made Sarah Ryan, the
wife of three living husbands, at the age of thirty-three, his Bristol
and Kingswood housekeeper.
With the utmost respect for Wesley, we cannot but consider this an
exceedingly hasty and imprudent act. Perhaps Sarah Ryan was converted;
but naturally, she was vain, flippant, giddy, and far from being what
a Methodist housekeeper ought to be. In addition to this, though her
sin of marrying three men in succession, without any of them dying,
might be pardoned by the God whose commands she had so grossly broken,
yet, all will admit, that a foolish young servant woman, who had so
flagrantly transgressed the laws of her country, and, for her crimes,
could, at any moment, be sent to prison, was not exactly the woman to
be the matron of Kingswood school, and the favourite correspondent of
Wesley in the years 1757 and 1758. No wonder that Wesley’s naturally
jealous wife was fired with indignation; and that, at one of the
Bristol conferences, when Sarah Ryan was sitting at the head of a
table, where sixty or seventy of the preachers were dining, Wesley’s
irritated spouse rushed into the room, and pointing to the presiding
matron, shrieked,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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