Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/74

62 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 ill-natured 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