Left from my birth to Thee my God

Verse 1
Left from my birth to Thee my God,
Thro’ life the object of thy care,
Forsaking now this mean abode,
I ask, in agony of prayer,
Peace, when this feeble body dies,
And a smooth passage to the skies.

Verse 2
O re-assure my sprinkled heart,
Thou dost abundantly forgive,
That meet, and joyful to depart,
My friends I in thy hands may leave,
While all my cancel’d sin I see
Nail’d with thy body to the tree.

Verse 3
Open my mouth to speak thy praise,
Thy faithful love which never ends,
To minister thy balmy grace,
To chear my sad, surviving friends
And leave a blessing large behind,
Fruit of my prayers for all mankind.

Verse 4
But chiefly let my dying cries
Avail for those I call’d my own,
Indear’d by nature’s softest ties,
After the flesh no longer known,
To Them, dear Lord, thy love impart,
And write thy name on every heart.

Verse 5
On Them, on me the prayer be seal’d
In peace, and purity, and power,
That conscious of the grace reveal’d,
I may at death’s triumphant hour
Declare the glorious earnest given,
And leave them following me to heaven.

Hymnal/Album: This hymn appears in the manuscript “MS Preparation for Death.” 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 1977/578, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Preparation for Death, in Several Hymns (London, 1772). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 7 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 404.
Publishing: Public Domain