“You will not forget to evidence this by supporting and comforting her in her age, if it please God that she should ever attain to it, (though I doubt she will not,) and doing nothing which may justly displease or grieve her, or show you unworthy of such a mother. You will endeavour to repay her prayers for you by doubling yours for her; and, above all things, to live such a virtuous and religious life that she may find that her care and love have not been lost upon you, but that we may all meet in heaven.
“In short, reverence and love her as much as you will, which I hope will be as much as you can. For though I should be jealous of any other rival in your heart, yet I will not be jealous of her; the more duty you pay her, and the more frequently and kindly you write to her, the more you will please your affectionate father,
“Samuel Wesley.”[[188]]
This beautiful advice was not lost. Samuel Badcock, (no great friend of the Wesley family,) in the third volume of the “Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica,” published in 1790, writes:—“I have in my possession a letter of this poor and aged parent, addressed to his son Samuel, in which he gratefully acknowledges his filial duty in terms so affecting that I am at a loss which to admire most—the gratitude of the parent, or the affection and generosity of the child. It was written when the good old man was nearly fourscore, and so weakened by a palsy as to be incapable of directing a pen, unless with his left hand. I preserve it as a curious memorial of what will make Wesley applauded when his wit is forgotten.”
The next letter is as characteristic and as full of interest as any of the preceding:—
“Epworth, November 8, 1706.
“Dear Child,—After piety to God and to your parents, your morals will fall next under consideration; or, your duty towards yourself and your neighbour.
“I hope I need not say much of justice toward your neighbour. Its general rules are short and easy. ‘Doing as you would be done by, and loving your neighbour as yourself;’ principles which have been admired by wise and virtuous heathens when they have heard them from the gospel; and which are, indeed, inscribed on the hearts of all mankind as a part of the law—natural, though much obliterated by the lapse of our nature and vicious habits.
“As for the regiment of your passions, all the rest depend, in a great measure, on these two—love and hatred, or rather anger.
“As for love, I shall only say at present that whoever expects to become anything in the world must guard against anti-Platonic love in his youth, shut his eyes and heart against it, burn romances, have a care of plays, and keep himself fully employed in some honest exercise; and then, I think, he will be in no very great danger from it.