So I blew through this one a little bit. The work is so pastoral in nature that it's clear that he is teaching the people in front of him a bit more than offering wisdom to the ages. It reminds me a bit of the selections in Bonhoeffer's "Life Together" when he instructs quite explicitly that all congregational singing should be done in unison and without instruments, while offering asides on people who think their magnificent mezzo-soprano should be loud and clear for everyone to enjoy as though he is thinking of someone specifically. I agree with just about every other thing Wesley has to say on parenting and the education of children. The things I agree with, I agree heartily with, and the things I disagree with I REALLY disagree with. I agree that all education and parenting should be done in reference to and in the light of God, present and active in the room with us. I agree that the parental relationship is the first scaffolding that a person brings to their own personal understanding of God, and that this impresses a deep responsibility upon the parent. When I use the word Puritanical here, I try to mean it in it's literal sense and not it's pejorative sense. I think the basis of my disagreements with Wesley come from my distance from the Puritanical, and indeed any strain of Christianity that resolves upon itself to hate the world. God Loves The World. God created it, and it was Good. God loved the world so much, that he gave his Son as a ransom for it, and His Son's Church is in the progress of making real the already and not yet promise of reconciling creation unto Himself. I think God has given us rich food for celebration, beautiful objects for the glory and delight of beauty in it's transcendence. I think the resolution to never give children things they cry for, never praise them to their faces, and to combat and break self-will at the earliest possible time is a practice in direct contravention of the character of Christ himself and our call to be His Ambassadors in creation; this is not how Jesus treats us. He is patient with us. He is kind. He does not envy our affections or attention, he does not boast of his authority in our lives. He is patient with us and gives us every opportunity to say no while always beckoning us and encouraging us to say yes. And it's frustrating because he's so clearly on the right track when it comes to emphasizing justice, fairness, abhorrence of all deception, of not tolerating any cruelty or unkindness in their children. As my family says, "eat the chicken, leave the bones," or, take the good stuff and maybe leave the stuff that belongs in the past, in the past.