A life of piety-severe

Verse 1
A life of piety severe,
A distance from external vice
May cherish pride in the sincere,
And tempt them others to despise,
Of favour’d rivals to complain
With murm’ring jealousy of heart,
As God indebted were to man,
And paid him less than his desert.

Verse 2
How great the pardning grace Divine,
Which envy in a saint can raise!
Left to themselves, the just repine
That Jesus is so rich in grace;
So rich above all human thought,
So plenteous in benignity,
So kind to those who merit nought,
So good to publicans’—and me!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more, and they likewise received every man a penny, and when they had received it they murmured &c.’—[Matt. 20,] v. 10, 11.” 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 333.
Publishing: Public Domain