Wesley Corpus

Do not you frequently resolve against it, and do not you break those resolutions again and again? Can you help breaking them? If so, why do you not? Are not you prone to “unreasonable desires,” either of pleasure, praise, or money? Do not you catch yourself desiring things not worth a desire, and other things more than they deserve? Are all your desires proportioned to the real intrinsic value of things? Do you not know and feel the contrary? Are not you continually liable to “foolish and hurtful desires?” And do not you frequently relapse into them, knowing them to be such; knowing that they have before “pierced you through with many sorrows?” Have you not often resolved against these desires, and as often broke your resolutions? Can you help breaking them? Do so; help it, if you can; and if not, own your helplessness. Are you throughly pleased with your own life? Nihilna vides quod nolis ? “Do you observe nothing there which you dislike?” I presume you are not too severe a judge here; nevertheless, I ask, Are you quite satisfied, from day to day, with all you say or do? Do you say nothing which you after wards wish you had not said? do nothing which you wish you had not done? Do you never speak anything contrary to truth or love? Is that right? Let your own conscience deter mine. Do you never do anything contrary to justice or mercy? Is that well done? You know it is not. Why, then, do you not amend? Moves, sed nil promoves. You resolve, and resolve, and do just as you did before. Your wife, however, is wiser and better than you. Nay, perhaps you do not think so. Possibly you said once,-- “Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy; Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I.” But you do not say so now : She is not without faults; and you can see them plain enough. You see more faults than you desire, both in her temper and behaviour: And yet you cannot mend them; and she either cannot or will not. And she says the very same of you. Do your parents or hers live with you? And do they, too, exercise your patience? Is there nothing in their temper or behaviour that gives you pain?