To Mary (Goldhawk/Vazeille) Wesley (December 23, 1758)
December 23, 1758
Dear Molly,
I was much concerned the night before I left London at your unkind and unjust accusation. You accused me of unkindness, cruelty, and what not. And why so? Because I insist on choosing my own company, because I insist upon conversing, by speaking or writing, with those whom I (not you) judge proper! For more than seven years this has been a bone of contention between you and me, and it is so still. For I will not, I cannot, I dare not give it up. ‘But then you will rage and fret and call me names.’ I am sorry for it. But I cannot help it. I still do and must insist that I have a right to choose my own company. Then you will ‘denounce against me all the curses from Genesis to the Revelation’. You may so. But you gain no ground hereby, for still I cannot give up my right. Nay, but ‘you will say all manner of evil of me’. Be it so, but still I stand just where I was. Then ‘you will show my private letters to all the 146world’. If you do, I must assert my right still. All this will not extort it from me, nor anything else which you can do. You may therefore as well allow it now as after we have squabbled about it (if we live so long) seven years longer, for it is my right by all the laws of God and man, and a right which I never can part with. O do not continue to trouble yourself and me and to disturb the children of God by still grasping at a power which must be denied you by him who is nevertheless,
Your truly affectionate husband,John Wesley
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Entry Title: To Mary (Goldhawk/Vazeille) Wesley (December 23, 1758)