Author: Charles Wesley Meter: 7.7.7.7 D Appears in 2 hymnals Lyrics: 1 God of truth, and power, and love,
Father, friend of all mankind,
Let on me Thy Spirit move,
Influence my feeble mind;
’Twixt the serpent’s seed and me
Prevalently interpose,
Break the fatal amity,
Make us everlasting foes.
2 Sin hath poisoned all my soul,
Sin, the serpent’s cursèd seed:
No one part in me is whole,
Yet will I the promise plead;
Promise of all-saving grace,
Promise of an inward power,
Able to redeem the race,
Me, and all men to restore.
3 Breathe the breath of simple life,
Oh! Be Abel born in me
Previous to the legal strife,
Innocent simplicity:
Give me childishness to oppose
All the subtle serpent’s art;
Childishness no evil knows,
Give me, Lord, a simple heart.
4 Or if pride hath this destroyed
Turned into self-righteousness,
Let the law supply the void,
Seth succeed in Abel’s place.
Deeply root Thy law within
Parent of the wretched man;
Check my forwardness to sin,
Forcibly by fear restrain.
5 Bind in me the strong-man bind
With the fetters of the law;
Curb and thwart the carnal mind,
Keep the man of sin in awe;
Enemy to all that’s good,
He can only be subdued
By the sense of pardoning grace;
Never will he quite give place.
6 Tell me Jesus died for me,
Show some token of His love;
Love and sin can never agree,
Love shall still the stronger prove:
Love in the first measure give,
Sin shall then no longer sway,
Flesh may for a season strive,
I the Spirit shall obey.
7 Patiently I then shall wait
For the woman’s noblest seed,
Jesus Christ the mighty hate,
Bruiser of the serpent’s head;
O reveal Thy Son in me,
Bring the perfect nature in,
Now destroy the enmity,
Now consume the man of sin.
8 Adam, flesh, and self, and pride,
Antichrist, perdition’s son,
Let him not in me abide,
Cast him out, and reign alone;
Slay the dragon in the sea,
Make my soul Thy pure abode,
Filled with all the deity,
Swallowed up, and lost in God. Used With Tune: ABERYSTWYTH Text Sources: Hymns and Sacred Poems (Bristol, England: Felix Farley, printer, 1742)
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