Before He purge my sin away

Verse 1
Before He purge my sin away,
And make me truly free,
Is it a little thing to say
“I have no sin in me?”
Is it no sin, to take my ease
As wholly sanctified,
And slightly heal the sore disease,
The loathsom plague of pride?

Verse 2
Perfection if I boldly claim,
My own fond heart believe,
Myself (while full of sin I am)
I fatally deceive:
Howe’er I boastingly profess
My spotless purity,
Of real faith, and solid grace
There is no truth in me.

Verse 3
No true humility, and love,
No true repentance I,
No just, or holy tempers prove,
But all I am ’s a lie:
And if incorrigibly proud,
Myself I still miscall
I stand a witness false for God,
Till into hell I fall.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’—[1 John] 1:8.” This hymn appears in the 1783 manuscript “MS Scriptural Hymns.” 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 1977/576, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 472.
Publishing: Public Domain