Godly in Christ resolv’d to live

Verse 1
Godly in Christ resolv’d to live,
Branded by an opprobrious name
The scandal calmly we receive
Th’ impos’d Appellative disclaim:
The world may either curse, or bless,
Names cannot make us more or less.

Verse 2
Not the wild Authors of a Sect,
Not Ringleaders, ourselves we call,
But messengers of God elect,
Raised up for preaching Christ to all,
To Christians not in heart but name,
Whose lives with heathens are the same.

Verse 3
Not as distinguish’d from the rest
In a new Party’s bounds confin’d
But sent we run, in spirit prest
To do the work by God design’d,
Primeval piety revive,
And show how real Christians live.

Verse 4
Born and bred up within the Pale
Of England’s Church, to her we owe
Our first regard; and cannot fail
Our filial gratitude to show,
And gladly in her service join
Affection natural and divine.

Verse 5
We for our dearest Country feel
A warmth which words cannot express,
An inextinguishable zeal
Which patriots false in vain profess;
Nor can we from a Church remove
Which more than life we prize and love.

Verse 6
By civil and religious ties
United to our brethren here,
Them we respect who us despise,
Who neither God nor man revere,
But in the deadly darkness dwell
And riot on the Verge of hell.

Verse 7
While plung’d in wickedness and vice
Our wretched Countrymen we see,
We see them with the Saviour’s eyes,
We feel his yearning sympathy,
Sad Prophet of their woes to come
Who wept the bloody City’s doom.

Verse 8
We put his tender bowels on
Who did his murtherers redeem,
Our lives made willing to lay down,
To spend, and to be spent for Them
Our brethren, countrymen; —and friends
When hatred in conversion ends.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “The Call of the First, Sound Methodist Preachers.” This hymn appears in the manuscript “Hymns for the Methodist Preachers in 1786,” abbreviated as as “MS Preachers 1786.” 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 1977/583/10, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 4). 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 3 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1992), pages 59-60.
Publishing: Public Domain