How happy the men who born from above

Verse 1
How happy the men Who born from above
Were first to maintain The freedom of love;
Who left an example Ourselves to forego,
And taught us to trample On all things below!

Verse 2
Believers of old Who Jesus confess’d,
Lands, houses they sold, With all they possess’d:
The miserly pleasure They dared to despise,
And laid up their treasure And hearts in the skies.

Verse 3
Affection unfeign’d The members inclin’d,
And sweetly constrain’d, Each other to mind;
As sisters and brothers The faithful were one,
The souls of all others Each lov’d as his own.

Verse 4
The deed we commend For ages is past;
Yet God did intend The usage to last:
And could we inherit That primitive Flame,
The fruit of that Spirit Would now be the same.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘All that believed were together, and had all things common &c.’—[Acts 2,] v. 44, 45.” It appears in the 1764 manuscript “MS Acts.” 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 1977/555, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. The first two stanzas were published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 155. The complete hymn was published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 289-90.
Publishing: Public Domain