Ambitious, covetous, and vain,
Priests who in ease and pleasure live,
They persecute their Lord again,
His members vex, his Spirit grieve;
Souls by their negligence they kill,
Jesus afresh they crucify,
And eat, and drink, and sport their fill,
And let the poor thro’ hunger die.
Ambitious, covetous, and vain
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.'—[Luke 20,] v. 14.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Luke.” 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 1977/575, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 183.
Publishing: Public Domain