Wesley Corpus

Why you defer your advice till my debts are paid [See letter of March 19, 1727.] you may probably see a reason; I do not. I reckon my Fellowship near sixty pounds a year. Between forty and fifty it will infallibly cost to live at college, use what management I can. As for pupils, I am not qualified to take them till one of our tutors goes away; when that will be is very uncertain. What you mean by my debt at Wroot I do not apprehend. If the whole I have at any time received of my father, I know not how much it is, and shall not therefore know (as neither will you) when it is satisfied; if what I have received at the University, I may be ruined for want of advice before I can possibly repay that; if what I received when last in the country, that was nothing at all, for I not only bore my own expenses in traveling, but paid ready money for whatever I brought from thence, and left money behind me -- though for several reasons I did not think good to tell my father so much when he blamed me with being so expensive to him in that journey. My sister Hetty's behavior has, for aught I have heard, been innocent enough since her marriage. Most of my disputes on Charity with my father were on her account, he being inconceivably exasperated against her. 'Tis likely enough he would not see her when at Wroot: he has disowned her long ago, and never spoke of her in my hearing but with the utmost detestation. Both he, my mother, and several of my sisters were persuaded her penitence was but feigned. One great reason for my writing the above-mentioned sermon was to endeavor, as far as in me lay, to convince them that, even on the supposition that she was impenitent, some tenderness was due to her still; which my mother, when I read it to her, was so well aware of that she told me as soon as she had read it, 'You writ this sermon for Hetty; the rest was brought in for the sake of the last paragraph.'