By the ordinance divine,
And not thro’ servile fear,
Persecution we decline,
Till call’d of God t’ appear:
Issuing then from our retreat,
We openly maintain thy cause,
Dauntless, Lord, thy murtherers meet,
And suffer on thy cross.
By the ordinance divine
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews, but went thence into a country near to the wilderness, and there continued with his disciples.’—[John 11,] v. 54." This hymn appears in the 1763-64 manuscript “MS John.” 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 1977/573, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 250.
Publishing: Public Domain