The sinner big with creature-love

The sinner big with creature-love,
With worldly hopes, designs, desires,
Will not from earth his heart remove,
Till God his wretched soul requires:
The soft, effeminate soul, employ’d
To nurse and please its body here,
How can it ’scape the wrath of God,
When summon’d at his bar t’ appear!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Wo unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days.’—[Matt. 24,] v. 19.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.” This manuscript is part of the collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester (accession number MA 1977/577, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 370.
Publishing: Public Domain