Historical Polygamy in Modern Times

This is just a copy and paste from the above link:

“Without Martin Madan’s hymnal the revivals to follow would have been delayed. Without his teachings on polygamy, the greatest Christian composer of the 19th century would not have been born.

What may be the most amazing miracle of all is that Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Samuel’s son through Pexy, was never considered illegitimate by the church or society [miracle 10] and Samuel was recognized as being married to Pexy despite the fact that he remained legally married to Charlotte throughout his life. The hypocrisy of today’s churches is in stark contrast to the churches of that time in that fornicating ministers and musicians, even adulterers and adulteresses, are tolerated today but one who might take a wife without a license or take a second wife while still married to the first wife are cast aside as useless.

Samuel Wesley, the son of Charles Wesley, the greatest hymn writer of the 18th century, was indeed the most famous polygamist to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob since Solomon. Samuel Wesley, the most famous Christian polygamist of all time.”

http://www.christianmarriage.com/home/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=112

According to this, the Methodists were the first Christian Church to accept as legitimate, the plural wives of Samuel Wesly, the Son of Charles Wesley. These Christians believed that the covenants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be restored in modern times and may have influenced Joseph Smith as he said that he investigated the Methodist Church at one time.

These Christians believed that the covenants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be restored in modern times and may have influenced Joseph Smith as he said that he investigated the Methodist Church at one time.

Great post. Very interesting, I haven’t heard of this before. Interesting that people rush to blame Joseph for stealing ideas for scripture or for temple ceremony stuff from others, but let the whole Polygamy thing be a completely Mormon thing. This also lessens the arguments that JS was just looking for excuses to justify his “natural man” tendancies…that in fact, it made sense to other groups as well. As with other things like building Nauvoo, the Mormons were just very good at putting it into practice until it was big enough it threatened other members of society that they called for government action.

It is good to remember that during that time (early 1800s) there was a lot of reformation activity.