Charles Wesley Short Hymns

Charles WESLEY. Short Hymns on Select Passages of Holy Scripture. 2 volumes, 1762 no jornal John WESLEY (ed.). Arminian Magazine, 1779-1783. [= AJW]

AJW, 1779, p. 271 – Êx 34.6 [Rubrica A short hymn]

Merciful and gracious

“Merciful God, thyself proclaim / in this polluted breast; / Mercy is thy distingh´d name, / which suits a sinner best: / Our misery doth for pity call, / our sin implores thy grace; / And thou ared merciful to all / our lost apostate race.”

AJW, 1779, p. 271 – Do 34.6 [Rubrica A short hymn]

Abundant in goodness

“Thy goodness and thy truth to me / to every soul abound; / A vast unfashomable [erro de impressão? unfashionable?] sea / where all our thoughts are drown´d: / It’s streams the whole creation reach / So plenteous is the store; / enough for all, enough for each, / Enough for every more.”

AJW, 1779, p. 271 – DT 34.6 [Rubrica A short hymn]

Abundant in truth

“Faithful, o Lord, thy mercies are; / A rock that cannot move; / A thousand promises declare / thy constancy of love: / Throughout the universe it reigns / Unalterably sure; / And while the truth of God remains, / The goodness must endure.”

AJW, 1779, p. 327 – Nu 6.24 [Rubrica A short hymn]

The Lord bless and keep thee

“Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, / One God in person three, / Bring back the heavenly blessing lost, / By all mankind and me: / Thy favour and thy nature, too, / to me, to all restore / Forgive, and after God renew, / and keep us evermore.”

AJW, 1779, p. 327 – Nu 6.25 [Rubrica A short hymn]

The Lord make to shine his Face upon thee, and be gracious unto thee

“ETERNAL Son of righteousness, / Display thy beams divine, / And cause the glory of thy face, / upon my heart to shine; / Light in thy light, o may I see, / Thy grace and mercy proof, / Reviv´d and cheer´d and blessed by thee / The God of Pard´ning love.”

AJW, 1779, p. 328 – Nu 6.26 [Rubrica A short hymn]

The Lord lift up thy countenance upon thee and give thee peace:

“Lift up thy countenance serene, / and let thy happy child, / Behold without a cloud between, / The Godhead reconcil´d; / That all comprising peace bestow / on me thro´ grace forgiven, / The joys of holiness below, / and then the joys of heaven.”

AJW, 1780, p. 176 – Jó 35.10 [Rubrica A short hymn]

God giveth songs in the night:

“Thou giver of songs in the night, / of joy in the darkness distress; / I fight to recover thy light, / I long for a glimpse of thy face: / Ah, but the new song in my heart, / (For nothing on earth I desire,) / And lo! I exult to depart, / And mix with the heavenly choir.”

AJW, 1780, p. 511 – Is 1.11 [Rubrica A short hymn]

When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hands to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblation

“Away with your oblation vain, / who only with your lips draw near, / Trample my courts, my house profane, / And loathsome in my sight appear: / Ye make the outside fear and clean; / Ye come to see and to be seen.”

AJW, 1780, p. 620 – Is 6.6-7 [Rubrica A short hymn]

The wolf shall dwell...

“ Prince of universal peace, / destroy the enmity; / bid our jars and discords cease / Unite us all in thee: / Cruel as wild beast we are; / Till vanquished by thy mercy’s power, / Men, like wolves each other tear, / And their on flesh devour.”

[2]: “ But if thou pronounce the word/ That forms our souls again, / Love and harmony restored / Throughout the earth shall reign; / When thy wondrous love they feel, / The human-savages are tame; / Ravenous wolves and leopards dwell / and stable with the lamb.”

[3]: “Bears transformed with oxen graze, / Their young together feed: / With the calf, the lion plays, / Nor rends the dandled kid; / Harshest natures reconciled, / With soft and fierce with meek agree: / Gentle, teachable, and mild / As harmless infancy.”

[4]: “ O that now, with pardon blessed, / We each might each embrace, / Quietly together rest / and seed [feed?] upon thy grace! / Like our sinless parents life! / Great Sheppard, make thy goodness known, / All into thy fold receive, / And keep forever one.”

AJW, 1781, p. 119 – Is 41.17 [Rubrica A short hymn]

When the poor and needy seek water…

[1]: “Poor needy souls athirst and faint, / Who gasp for my redeeming love, / I will supply thy spirits want, / When blindly after me they rove; / When in the barren wilderness, / Water they seek with fruitless care, / Seek in the channels of my grace, / Yet not one cooling drop is there.”

[2]: “Attentive to their feeblest cry, / When fails for thirst their cleaving tongue, / I mark them with a pitying eye, / I hear their silence ask, “How long?” / The Lord of hosts, the God of grace, / I never will my people leave, / But present in their last distress, / The long expected blessing give.”

AJW, 1781, p. 119-120 – Is 42.3 [Rubrica A short hymn]

A bruised reed he shall not break…

[1]: “Thou will not crush the poor and weak, / The tender heart can never bear / a reed already bruised to brake, / To plunge the fearful in despair; / or aggravate a sinners load, / Or quench his faintest part of good.”

[2]: “Rather thy loving spirit divine / shall raise the smoke into a flame; / support this trembling soul of mine, / Till strong I out of weakness am, / And as a spreading cedar rise, / Meet for the garden of the skies.”

[3]: “Bear with me then, most patient Lord, / (This smoking flax, this bruised reed) / Accomplishing thy faithful word, / The heavenly light, the hidden feed, / Bring forth, throughout my life to shine, / And prove thy righteousness divine.”

AJW, 1781, p. 120 – Is 49.8 [Rubrica A short hymn]

I will thee give for the covenant of my people...

[1]: “Treaty of peace, 'twixt God and men, / Thee Jesus, thee we gladly own; / What´ver the covenant doth contain, / Is all comprized in Thee alone; / Its surety thou, its blessings art, / its substance in thy peoples heart.”

[2]: “Come then, thy Father’s will to do, / His Wisdom, and effectual Power: / Thou only canst our earth renew, / Our desolated souls restore; / and fill the drooping heart with peace, / And 'stablish us in righteousness.”

[3]: “The ghastly wastes, that sin hath made, / God of almighty love repair, / Revive our piety decayed, / Rise out of her ruins fair: / Thy church, thy blameless body, show, / The plenitude of God below.”

AJW, abril 1781, p. 344 – Mc 3.5 [Rubrica A short hymn]

He looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts

[1]: “Such me all my anger be, / sin when I in others see, / Not the pagan passion blind, / Rage of a vindictive mind, / But the fervency of zeal, / Pained for those you cannot feel.”

[2]: “Lord, import thy grief to me, / Grief for man’s obduracy, / Angry at the sin alone, / Let me for the sinners groan, / Till his hardness thou remove, / His and mine by dying love.”

AJW, out. 1781, p. 566 – 1Co 15.43 [Rubrica A short hymn]

It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power

“This flesh at the last gasp restores, / The feeble strength it once enjoyed, / Deprived of all its active force, / It lies, of sense and motion void; / But raised in power to reach the skies, / Inspired with vigorous life unknown, / With lightning winged, it mounts, it flies, it stands before the Saviour’s throne.”

AJW, 1781, p. 621 – 1Co 15.44 [Rubrica A short hymn]

It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body

“A body natural, by food, / and sleep sustained, to death I give; / A body spiritual endued, / With nobler qualities receive, / A permanent, ethereal frame, / From all material dregs refined, / Composed of pure angelic flame, / And meet for my eternal mind.”

AJW, 1781, p. 680 – Cl 3.8-9 [Rubrica A short hymn]

But now you also put of all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another:

[1] “But did the saints of God, the dead, / With Christ the partners of his rise / The Spirit’s strongest caution need, / 'Gainst every sin and every vice? / O what are men, (if God remove) / The best the perfected in love?”

[2] “The holiest who their watch remit, / May sink into the temper’s snare, / Will fall into the helliesh pit, / Until with humble ceaseless prayer, / They to the last themselves deny / And conquerors in the harshness dy.”

AJW, 1782 p. 680 – 1Pd 3.8 [Rubrica A short hymn]

Be pitiful

[1] “How shall I that love attain, / Love inexplicably kind, / Love which feels another’s pain, / Generous, pure, and unconfined, / Love which bleeds for friend and foe, / Grasps an universe of woe.”

[2] “Father, manifest thy Son, / Full of pitying grace for me: / Then I put his bowels on, / Sinners with his eyes I see, / Sinner with his heart embrace, / Glad to dy for all the race.”

AJW, 1782, p. 56 – Rm 15.2 [Rubrica A short hymn]

Let every one of us please his neighbour...

“Every gift on me bestowed, / Let me, Lord, to all impart; / Studious of my neighbour’s good, / Serve him with a willing heart; / Serve with complaisance divine, Serve till both are wholly thine.”

AJW, 1782, p. 448 – Tg 2.26 [Rubrica A short hymn]

The Lord bless and keep thee:

[1] “As when the active soul is fled [sled?] , / A sensless lump the body lies. / The faith, which did from God proceed, / If sep´rated from works, it dies, / A carcase without life and power, / A faith extinct, is faith no more.”;

[2] “Faith without works, is not the true; / The living principles of grace, / The virtue which can all things do, / Works universal righteousness, / And gains, when all its toils are past, / The promise of pure love at last.”

[3] “Know this ye infidels in heart, / Who boast your barren faith in vain, / Who dare the sacred word pervert, / The carcase dead is not the man, / Or if ye did true life receive, / Ye ceas´d at once to work and live.”

[4] “Dreamers of your salvation sure, / Awaking unto righteousness, / Your Antinomian Faith abjure, / Your groundless hope and hellish peace; / Arise, and wash away your sins: / And then the work of faith begins.”

AJW, 1782, p. 557 – Tg 3.1 [Rubrica A short hymn]

From whence come war and fighting among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts?

[1] “Horrible lust of fame and power, / How long shall it o´er kings prevail? / Who bit the sword their kind devour, / lay waste the earth and people hell, / And madly for themselves prepare, / The highest thrones of torment there.”

[2] “ Father, from every bosom chase, / the demon of ambitious pride, / In pity to our slaughtered race, / For whom thy only Son hath died, / The Saviour prince, the peace of man, / Send him in all our hearts to reign.”

[3] “ The kingdom of his grace alone, / Can make our wars and fightings cease, / Unite our jarring wills in one / perpetual bond of perfectness, / As rivals of that host above, / Where all his harmony and love.”

AJW, 1783, p. 113 – Ap 3.18 [Rubrica A short hymn]

I counsel thee to by from gold tried in the fire:

[1] “Gladly I take thy love’s advice, / While without money, without price, / I come thy grace to buy; / Faith is the golden bollion pure, / Which can the fiery test endure, / And all my wants supply.”

[2] “I come to buy that richest dress, / The saints unspotted holiness, / The covering from above; / To swallow up my sinful shame, / Whate´er I have, whate´er I am, / in purity of love.”

AJW, 1783, p. 168 – Ap. 3.18 [2] [Rubrica A short hymn]

I counsel thee to by from gold tried in the fire:

[1] “All things that I may clearly see, / The Spirit that proceeds from thee, / The unction I implore: / O might I now the blessing gain, / The sight of thee my Lord obtain, / And never lose it more.”

[2] “Jesus thy promised Spirit impart, / To cure the blindness of my heart, / Mine unbelief to chase; / That I thy upon face may see, / And spent a blessed eternity / in ecstasies of praise.”