Original - Duke Divinity School

Mr Herbert. 288
Constancy 289
Who is the Honest Man?
He that does still and strongly Good pursue,
To God, himself, and to his Neighbour True: 290
Whom neither Force nor Fawning can
Dissuade or wrench from giving All their Due. …
Who, when Great Trials come,
Nor seeks, nor shuns them; but does calmly stay,
Till He the Thing and the Example weigh:
All being brought into a Sum,
What Place or Person calls for, he doth pay. …
Who never melts or thaws
At close Temptations: When the Day is done,
His Goodness sets not, but in Dark can run:
The Sun to others writes Laws,
And is their Virtue; Virtue is his Sun.
Who, when he is to treat
With those whom Sickness shakes, or Passions sway, 291
Allows for that, and keeps his constant Way:
Whom Others Faults do not defeat;
Though Men fail Him, yet He his Part will play.
Whom nothing can procure,
When the Wide World runs bias from his Will
To writhe his Limbs, and share, not mend the Ill.
This is the Marks-man, safe and sure,
Who still is right, and Prays to be so still.
288 George Herbert (1593–1633), The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. Cambridge: Buck &
Daniel, 1633. Wesley records “collecting” from this volume in his Oxford Diary (25–29 November 1729).
289 Herbert, Temple, #47 (pp. 63–64). Wesley published later in Herbert (1773), 14–15.
290 Ori.: “To God, his neighbor, and himself most true.”
291 Ori.: “With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway.”
175