For half a mournful century
I have afflicted been,
And groan’d beneath the tyranny
Of my own bosom-sin:
Th’ inveterate obstinate disease
I struggled with in vain;
And hardly now at last confess,
There is no help in man.
For half a mournful century
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘A certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.’—[John 5,] v. 5." 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 S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 234.
Publishing: Public Domain