Sovereign Everlasting Lord, Thou art perfect righteousness

Verse 1
Sovereign Everlasting Lord,
Thou art Perfect Righteousness:
Pure is thine unerring Word,
Upright are thy high Decrees:
Righteous all thy Statutes are,
Thee The Merciful they prove,
Thee The Faithful they declare,
Full of Truth and full of Love.

Verse 2
Swallow’d up with fervent Zeal
My presumptuous Foes I see,
Who against my GOD rebel
Slight the Law prescrib’d by Thee.
Holy is thy Word and right,
Therefore doth my Heart embrace
Loves it with a pure Delight,
Freely joyfully obeys.

Verse 3
Small I am in my own Eyes,
Poor, and despicably low,
Yet I still thy Precepts prize,
Will not from thy Precepts go.
Truth and Righteousness Divine.
Essence of thy Precepts is
Truth that shall thro’ Ages shine,
Everlasting Righteousness.

Verse 4
Pain, and Anguish, and Affright
Oft my troubled Soul assail,
Yet thy Law is my Delight,
Stays, when all my Comforts fail;
Never can thy Word remove;
Thou the Heavenly Wisdom give,
I shall then be sav’d by Love,
Free from Sin forever live.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “Psalm 119. XVIII.” This hymn was appears in the mid-to-late-1740s manuscript “MS Fish.” 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 1977/566, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 2). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School.
Publishing: Public Domain