Ann Lee View Sheet Music for this Artist
Early history
Ann Lee was born on February 29, 1736, the daughter of a blacksmith, in Manchester, England. Although a believer in celibacy, she had at her parents' urging married Abraham Stanley (Standley, or Standerin), and bore him four children, all of whom died in infancy. She joined the Wardleys, an English sect founded by Jane and preacher James Wardley, in 1758. She was miserable in marriage and by 1770 had begun to insist that the institution was not compatible with the kingdom of God. Like others in the Quaker tradition, she believed in and taught her followers that it is possible to attain perfect holiness. Like her predecessors the Wardleys, she taught that the demonstrations of shaking and trembling were caused by sin being purged from the body by the power of the Holy Spirit, purifying the worshipper. Distinctively, the followers of Mother Ann came to believe that she embodied all the perfections of God in female form.
Rise to prominence
She rose to prominence in the movement through her dramatic urging of the Believers to preach more publicly concerning the imminent second coming, and to attack sin more boldly and unconventionally. She spoke of visions and messages from God, claiming that she had received a vision from God the message that celibacy and confession of sin are the only true road to salvation, the only way in which the Kingdom of God could be established on the earth. She was frequently imprisoned for breaking the Sabbath by dancing and shouting, and for blasphemy. She had many "miraculous" escapes from death. Once, according to her story, being examined by four clergymen of the Established Church, she spoke to them for four hours in seventy-two tongues.[citation needed]
Ann Lee Sheet Music
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