Glory be to God on high, God Whose glory fills the sky. C. Wesley. [Holy Trinity.] This is a paraphrase of the Gloria in Excelsis of the Book of Common Prayer. The paraphrase is in J. & C. Wesley's Hymns & Sacred Poems, 1739, p. 128. In 1761 it was republished by J. Wesley in his Collection of 132 Select Hymns with Tunes Annext, but was not added to the Wesleyan Hymn Book till sometime after his death, and probably in 1800-1, although it had long been in use in the collections of Whitefield, Madan, Toplady, and others. In 1820 Cotterill included an altered and abridged version of the text in his Selection. In this, stanzas i.-iii.are altered slightly, stanza iv. greatly, and stanza v. is new. This version, again altered, and abridged, is found in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Psalms & Hymns, and other collections. (Original text, Poetical Works, 1868-72, vol. i. p. 115.) Another hymn, beginning with the first stanza of this hymn, with the repetition of lines 1, 2, as a refrain, and the addition of 4 stanzas with the same refrain to each, was given in Beard's Manchester Unitarian Collection, 1837, and repeated without the refrain in Hedge & Huntington's Hymns for the Church of Christ, Boston, U. S. A., 1853, No. 12, and also in other American collections. The additions to C. Wesley's opening stanza were by John Taylor of Norwich.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)