Susanna Wesley

2 SUSANNA WESLEY.
of duty towards an unkind and harsh parent, which
I doubt is contrary to Scripture and to reason. Nay,
supposing a parent was not able to provide for his
child, but be forced to expose him in infancy, and
leave him to the pity and charity of others, which you
know is very common in the great city where you
live ;
I say
it would follow that, if such a child should
afterwards accidentally come to know his parents, he
would not be obliged to pay them any manner of
duty ; which is so false that I believe nature itself
would teach him otherwise. I own that the obligations
of benefits, good education, and the like, when
added to that of nature, make the tie much stronger ;
and that those children whose parents either neglect
them or give them ill
examples, may be said, in one
sense, to be but little beholden to them for bringing
them into the world. But where these two are united
we can hardly express gratitude enough for them.
" Perhaps you
will think I am pleading my own cause;
and so, indeed, I am in some measure, but it is the
cause of my mother also ;
and even your own cause,
if
you should ever have children. And, indeed, that
of nature and civil society, which would be dissolved,
or exceedingly weakened, if this great foundation-stone
should be removed.
" Yet, after all, though the tenderness and endearments
between parents and children, which illnatured
people, who, perhaps, are not capable of
them, may be apt to call 'fondness,' be a very
sensible and natural pleasure, and such as I think
mutual benefits only could hardly produce ;
I should
think, if we come to weigh obligations, that if the
parents after-care, in informing the mind of the child,
and launching it out into the world, are perhaps