Destroyers of the public peace

Destroyers of the public peace,
The city they with tumult fill,
The Christians as seditious seize,
As Authors vile of every ill,
As pests, and poisoners of the air,
As Atheists they in pieces tear!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘The whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus &c.’—[Acts 19,] v. 29." 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 396.
Publishing: Public Domain