Have I not always feared

Verse 1
Have I not always fear’d
The anger of the Lord?
Thy voice I first from Sinai heard,
And trembled at thy word:
In childhood’s earliest hour
I sunk thro’ sore dismay,
At thought of thy vindictive power,
And that tremendous day.

Verse 2
The thunders of thy law
And secret checks within
Restrain’d, and kept my soul in awe,
And held me back from sin:
By young corrupters lured
To bolder lengths in vice,
I shrunk protected, and secured
Thro’ sacred cowardise.

Verse 3
By Moses doom’d to die
O how was I distress’d,
My fears of death and judgment nigh
A thousand fold increas’d!
My inbred hell was stir’d,
And horribly afraid,
I saw the just, avenging sword
Hang or’e my guilty head.

Verse 4
Of sad, tormenting fear
The Spirit I receiv’d,
And many a miserable year
In cruel bondage liv’d:
[Incomplete]

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Happy is the man that feareth always.’—[Prov.] 28:14.” This hymn appears in the 1783 manuscript “MS Scriptural Hymns.” 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 1977/576, 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. 9 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 354.
Publishing: Public Domain