It was Samuel who was now for the most part charged with the support of his mother; but in this duty there was a generous rivalry among-her children.  The name of John appears in discharge of the last of his father’s liabilities that had been cruelly pressed upon the very day of the funeral; and Charles writes to Samuel—­“My mother desires you will remember that she is a clergyman’s widow.  Let the Society give her what they please, she must be still, in some degree, burdensome to you.  How do I envy you that glorious burden, and wish I could share it with you:” 

Mrs. Wesley having now left the “old place,” settled for a little in the neighbouring town of Gainsborough, and afterwards resided with Samuel at Tiverton from September, 1736, till July, 1737.

Her sons John and Charles had now set out upon their well-known Gospel enterprise to the State of Georgia in America.  Their mother signalised the hour by a letter full of solemn and ennobling thought, in which she allows herself but slightly to touch upon the fact of separation, and gives her own personal version of the apostle’s “strait betwixt two”—­“One thing often troubles me:  that notwithstanding I know that while we are present with the body we are absent from the Lord; notwithstanding I have no taste, no relish left for anything the world calls pleasure, yet I do not long to go home, as in reason I ought to do.  This often shocks me.  Pray for me that God would make me better, and take me at the best.”

The Georgian mission of her sons having ended, to her joy, in their return home, a great work immediately opened for them in England.  It now became apparent, in their consultations with their mother, that the views of Divine truth and even of the mode of propagating the Gospel, which were taking possession of their minds, had to her been long and deeply familiar as the desire of her heart.  Her testimony was all the more valuable that it was given with much caution.

Samuel wrote to her complaining of the new ideas of his brothers John and Charles, and appealing confidently to her verdict in the matter.  He found that she mainly coincided with the returned missionaries in those convictions regarding the Gospel doctrines of faith and instantaneous conversion that were so soon to move the world.

At the same time she shared his apprehensions regarding certain things in the work that bore an aspect of extravagance.  “I should think that the reviving these pretentious to dreams, visions, etc., is not only vain and frivolous as to the matter of them, but also of dangerous consequence to the weaker sort of Christians.  As far as I can see, they plead that these visions, etc., are given to assure some particular persons of their adoption and salvation.  But this end is abundantly provided for in the Holy Scripture’s, wherein all may find the rules by which we must live here and be judged hereafter.  And if, upon a serious review of our state, we find that in the tenour of our lives we have or do now sincerely desire and endeavour to perform the conditions of the Gospel covenant required on our parts, then we may discern that the Holy Spirit hath laid in our minds a good foundation of a strong, reasonable, and lively hope of God’s mercy through Christ.”