Worldlings, anticipate the day

Verse 1
Worldlings, anticipate the day
When that ye count your chiefest good
Yourselves shall wish to cast away,
A sore, and worse than useless load
Which soon will sink your shatter’d ship,
And plunge you in th’ infernal deep.

Verse 2
Skin for your skin, and all ye have
Ye give, in jeopardy extreme,
A momentary life to save,
A dying body to redeem:
But if to save your wealth ye chuse,
Your soul’s eternal life ye lose.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us. And the third day we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship.’—[Acts 27,] v. 19." 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 437.
Publishing: Public Domain