Doth Jesus still the traitor spare

Verse 1
Doth Jesus still the traitor spare,
And patient to the end forbear
T’ expose his basest foe?
O may I thus behave to mine,
And all the tenderness Divine
To harden’d sinners show.

Verse 2
O that, like his disciples, I
Might to myself his word apply;
With candid charity
The traitor undisclos’d receive,
Nor evil of the worst believe,
Till forc’d by what I see!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him.’—[John 13,] v. 28." 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 509.
Publishing: Public Domain