He loves his father with what is obviously a quite genuine affection, but in his references to him there is generally a significant remembrance of himself.  He tells us that his father is a man “who, besides that he is my father, and a man that loves me, and hath ever done so, is also, at this day, one of the most careful and innocent men of the world.”  He advises his father “to good husbandry and to be living within the bounds of L50 a year, and all in such kind words, as not only made both them but myself to weep.”  He hopes that his father may recover from his illness, “for I would fain do all I can, that I may have him live, and take pleasure in my doing well in the world.”  Similarly, when his uncle is dying, we have a note “that he is very ill, and so God’s Will be done.”  When the uncle is dead, Pepys’ remark is, “sorry in one respect, glad in my expectations in another respect.”  When his predecessor dies, he writes, “Mr. Barlow is dead; for which God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets L100 per annum.”

Another exit towards idealism of the Christian and spiritual sort might be supposed to be found in his abundant and indeed perpetual references to churches and sermons.  He is an indomitable sermon taster and critic.  But his criticisms, although they are among the most amusing of all his notes, soon lead us to surrender any expectation of escape from paganism along this line.  “We got places, and staid to hear a sermon; but it, being a Presbyterian one, it was so long, that after above an hour of it we went away, and I home, and dined; and then my wife and I by water to the Opera.”  This is not, perhaps, surprising, and may in some measure explain his satisfaction with Dr. Creeton’s “most admirable, good, learned, and most severe sermon, yet comicall,” in which the preacher “railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the Presbyterians,” and ripped up Hugh Peters’ preaching, calling him “the execrable skellum.”  One man preaches “well and neatly”; another “in a devout manner, not elegant nor very persuasive, but seems to mean well, and that he would preach holily”; while Mr. Mills makes “an unnecessary sermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself nor the people.”  On the whole, his opinion of the Church is not particularly high, and he seems to share the view of the Confessor of the Marquis de Caranen, “that the three great trades of the world are, the lawyers, who govern the world; the Churchmen who enjoy the world; and a sort of fellows whom they call soldiers, who make it their work to defend the world.”