Verse 1
Father, I seek thy face,
Which once with joy I saw,
But quickly forfeited thy grace,
And lost my filial awe:
By sin, alas, beguil’d!
Beneath thy frown I grieve;
Pity thy most rebellious child,
And, if thou canst, forgive.
Verse 2
I know thy justice wills
That I should suffer here,
And lo! My troubled spirit feels
Thy righteous wrath severe:
Left to myself, I groan
In vain thy face to see,
My penal want of grace bemoan,
My penal want of thee.
Verse 3
In all my griefs below
The fatal cause I read,
Thy justice aims each vengeful blow
At my faint, guilty head;
In every touch of pain
I feel a stroke of thine,
And chasten’d by the rod of men
Revere the rod divine.
Verse 4
Thy awful righteousness
I in thy plagues revere,
Stript of my power, and joy, and peace,
And every comfort here:
The loss of friends, and fame,
The wormwood, and the gall,
The bitterness of grief, and shame,
My sins procur’d it all.
Verse 5
Yet what is all I bear
To what my sins require,
That blackness of extreme despair,
That everlasting fire!
Lord, I with thanks receive
Whate’er on earth I feel,
’Tis mercy all that here I live,
A sinner—not in hell.
Verse 6
Here let me still remain
(If so thy will decree)
In quiet grief, and silent pain,
And patient misery:
Let me my burthen bear,
While in the vale beneath,
And die ten thousand times for fear
Of that eternal death.
Verse 7
Yet, O my God, at last
The worst of sinners save,
When all my penal woes are past,
Redeem me from the grave:
That grave of souls accurst
O may I never see,
But save in death the chief, the worst
Of sinners save in me.