The harmless, inoffensive man

Verse 1
The harmless, inoffensive man
Is cast before the bar of God,
Cast by his own excuses vain,
For not performing what he cou’d:
And, burying that preventing grace,
Who justly perish unforgiven,
Shall mixt with fiends in groans confess
They might have sung with saints in heaven.

Verse 2
With shame and sorrow I confess
The vilest wickedness is mine;
Sloth is the vilest wickedness;
If idle in the work divine
I stand, and hide my talent still,
Till all my gracious day is past,
For doing neither good nor ill
I must be justly damn’d at last.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘His Lord answered Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap &c.’—[Matt. 25,] v. 26.” Wesley originally published an earlier version of verse 2 in his 1762 hymnal "Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2" (Bristol: Farley, 1762). He later revised it and added verse 1 in his unpublished 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.”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 S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 45. 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 390.
Publishing: Public Domain