Shut up in unbelief release,
Reveal their sin forgiven,

And bid them go in perfect peace

Thy confessors to heaven.

Hymns on the Trinity, 1767.

JEREMIAH 7, 4.

The Temple of the Lord are these.

THE men who slight Thy faithful Word,
In their own lies confide,
These are the Temple of the Lord,
And heathens all beside!
The Temple of the Lord are these,

The only Church and true,

Who live in pomp, and wealth, and ease,

And Jesus never knew!

The Temple of the Lord they pull

Thy living temples down,

And cast out every gracious soul

That trembles at Thy frown.

they from their pale expel

Whom Thou hast here forgiven; And all the synagogue of hell

Are the sole heirs of heaven!

O wouldst thou, Lord, reveal their sins,
And turn their joy to grief;

The world, the Christian world, convince

Of damning unbelief!

The formalists confound, convert,

And to Thy people join ;

And break, and fill the broken heart

With confidence divine!

Scripture Hymns, 1762.

FOR THE UNIVERSITIES.

TEACHER divine, with melting eye
Our ruined seats of learning see,
Whose ruling scribes Thy truth deny,
And persecute Thy saints and Thee,
As hired by Satan to suppress
And root up every seed of grace.

As heretics and Lollards still

Thy faithful confessors they brand; With all their strength and knowing skill Thy Spirit and His work withstand, In league with hell Thy throne to o'erthrow, And raise the kingdom of Thy foe.

Where knowledge vain, unsanctified
Fills every synagogue and chair,
Where pride and unbelief preside,

And wage with Heaven immortal war:

The prophets' nursing-schools are these,
Or sinks of desperate wickedness?

True prophets once they surely bred,
And champions for the incarnate God,
Who lived Thy dying Love to spread,
Who sealed the record with their blood,
The truth, the way, the life of grace,
Blasphemed by their degenerate race.

But wilt Thou let the fountains fail,
Or flow through earth with streams impure?
Thy Gospel must at last prevail,

Thy Word from age to age endure,
And learning fastened to the Cross
Forever serve Thy glorious cause.

Hymns of Intercession, 1758.

ON PERFECTION.

(From the Scripture Hymns, 1762.)

2 Chronicles 6, 36.

There is no man which sinneth not.

No every fallen child of man

:

Must sin in thought, and word, and deed :

But bursting our oppressor's chain

When Jesus hath His prisoners freed,

The dire necessity is o'er,

And born of God, we sin no more.

2 Corinthians 13, 11.

Be perfect. (i. e., Aspire to the highest degree of holiness.-Mr. John
Wesley's Notes on the New Testament.)

PRESS to the mark (the Spirit cries,
And cannot cry to saints in vain);
Ambitious of your calling's prize,
The height of holiness attain.
Let down from heaven the ladder see,
And mount, till all the steps are past.
Perfection is the last degree,

Perfection is attained the last.

John 5, 31.

If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.

AND shall mere man of men demand
His saying simply to receive,
Before the proofs we understand,
Before we see the witness live,
And evidence his sin forgiven
By walking like an heir of heaven?

We ought not to his word alone

Or confident assertions trust;
The life must join to make it known,
The works to show the doer just,
And all the Spirit's fruits to prove
A Christian perfected in love.

Philippians 3, 12.

Not as though I were already perfect.

"THEN know thy place (a novice cries,
Whose fancy has attained the prize,)
Stand by thyself, nor rank with me,
For I am holier than thee;
Beyond the chief Apostle I!
And you, who dare my gifts deny,
The proof of my perfection know;
because I think it so!"

It is

Philippians 3, 13.

I count not myself to have apprehended.

No not after twenty years
Of laboring in the Word!
After all his fights and fears

And sufferings for his Lord,
Paul hath not attained the prize,
Though caught up to the heavenly hill;

Daily still the Apostle dies,

And lives imperfect still!

"But we now, the prize to attain,

An easier method see,

Save ourselves the toil and pain

And lingering agony;