Envious and proud in every age

Verse 1
Envious and proud, in every age
The world against our Lord conspire,
With restless, unrelenting rage
Into his gracious work inquire
With stubborn infidelity
They ask, they urge, how can it be?

Verse 2
The wonders wrought in this our day,
Which thy experienced people know,
Saviour, they study, to gainsay,
Our faith by cavilling t’ o’rethrow,
The Spirit mock, the inward Light,
And rob Thee of thy gracious right.

Verse 3
Yet will we still the truth maintain,
Born and inlighten’d from above,
And tell the faithless world again
Thy miracles of power and love:
We know what Thou to us hast done,
But how’—appears to Thee alone.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes?’—[John 9,] v. 26." 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 447.
Publishing: Public Domain