Heathen in every age contend

Verse 1
Heathens in every age contend
For forms of godliness,
And strictly charge us not to rend
Our Lord’s external dress:
For Christ himself they nothing care,
Yet unity maintain;
The seamless coat they will not tear,
That each the whole may gain.

Verse 2
Each party calls the coat their own,
As masters of the loom,
Though neither at Geneva spun,
Nor Babylonish Rome:
Their feuds and strifes which never cease
Their fierce divisions prove,
They have not known the bond of peace,
The unity of love.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘The coat was without seam. They said therefore, Let us not rent it &c.’—[John 19,] v. 23, 24." 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 87.
Publishing: Public Domain