Still at a loss, ye know not how

Verse 1
Still at a loss, ye know not how
With these wild vagabonds to deal:
Shall priests Irregulars allow,
Or stop by force the growing ill?
But should ye crush by open force,
Ye fear to make the mischief worse.

Verse 2
Perplex’d, ye know not what to do:
Ye neither can destroy, nor praise
The men, who prove their mission true
By wonders of converting grace,
Who spread the news of sin forgiven,
Confirm’d by daily signs from heaven.

Verse 3
The glaring fact to all appears,
The grace on multitudes bestow’d:
Jesus hath bless’d his messengers,
Thousands are truly turn’d to God:
The fact yourselves are forc’d to own,
“The men undoubted good have done.”

Verse 4
Yet harden’d still ye will not yield
To truth which ye cannot deny;
The instruments rais’d up and seal’d
Your lack of service to supply,
To countenance ye dare not seem,
Ye dare not yet to death condemn.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.”—[Acts 4,] v. 16.” This hymn appears in the 1764 manuscript “MS Acts.” 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 1977/555, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. The first verse was published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), pages 175-76. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 294.
Publishing: Public Domain