First our Lord vouchsafes to praise

First our Lord vouchsafes to praise
His servant’s constancy:
Every minister of grace
Should thus unshaken be,
Stand the shock of earth and hell,
Firm as the anvil to the stroke,
Stedfast and immoveable,
As that Eternal Rock.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Jesus began to say concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see, a reed shaken with the wind?’—[Matt. 11,] v. 7.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.” 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 1977/577, 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. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 247.
Publishing: Public Domain