But you, who modern Rome foreswear

Verse 1
But you, who modern Rome foreswear,
And for a purer faith contend,
Is it your equitable care
Prejudging censures to suspend?
Can ye forbear the just to blame
When branded with an odious name?

Verse 2
From every secret bias free
Have ye the truth sincerely sought,
Unmov’d by popular calumny
Us and our foes together brought,
Produc’d the foul-mouth’d witnesses,
And heard us pleading face to face?

Verse 3
Your conscious hearts the answer give:
And if our Lord we truly know,
Godly in Him resolve to live,
And daily in his footsteps go,
We look not at your hands to find
The justice due to all mankind.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused &c.’—Acts 25, v. 16." 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 423.
Publishing: Public Domain