Self-righteous Pharisees

Verse 1
Self-righteous Pharisees
The sinners’ Friend oppose,
And priests in every age increase
The number of his foes;
While yet they might receive
Th’ eternal Son of God,
They neither will themselves believe,
Nor suffer us that wou’d.

Verse 2
Ye venerable men,
Who ’gainst your Saviour fight,
Imaginary ills ye feign,
And real dangers slight:
Least Rome your church o’rethrow,
Affectedly ye fear,
And thoughtless of your hellish foe,
Ye dread his successor.

Verse 3
Strangers to Jesus blood
Ye no conviction have,
Rejecting Him by God bestow’d
Your sinful souls to save:
But tremble at the day
Which shall his wrath reveal,
When Satan takes your souls away,
And shuts them up in hell.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him; and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.’—[John 11,] v. 48." 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. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 481.
Publishing: Public Domain