An emblem of the Gentiles see!
Men without law, and void of grace,
Abandon’d to brutality,
Prone to the earth in all their ways,
As serpents vile the dust they lick,
As ravenous birds their prey devour,
And here their base delights they seek
Like beasts that die, to live no more!
An emblem of the Gentiles see!
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth &c.’—[Acts 10,] v. 12.” This hymn 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. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 336. 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 246.
Publishing: Public Domain