Blind in our natural estate

Verse 1
Blind in our natural estate,
Of forms and notions proud,
Born of the flesh, we scorn and hate
The sacred sons of God;
The men who trust in Jesus’ death
As hereticks we doom,
And unreform’d, the spirit breathe
Of persecuting Rome.

Verse 2
Bishops by superstition steel’d
Have drawn the slaughtring sword,
Bishops have oft their dungeons fill’d
With servants of the Lord,
Cast out the saints of the Most-high
As execrable names,
Adjudg’d the wretches vile to die,
And drag’d them to the flames.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Which thing I also did: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.’—[Acts 26,] v. 10." 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 426.
Publishing: Public Domain