Strangers to faith we cannot trust

Verse 1
Strangers to faith we cannot trust;
If soften’d for a time they be,
Too soon ungrateful and unjust,
Strangers to kind humanity,
With Cain the murtherer they rise,
Their brethren’s lives to sacrifice.

Verse 2
The instruments to save their souls
Without remorse the ruffians kill,
Unless our Lord their rage controuls,
Our Lord who bids the winds “be still,”
And binds the sea thro’ his command
In chains of adamantine sand.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘The soldiers counsel was to kill the prisoners.’—[Acts 27,] v. 42." 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. 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 444.
Publishing: Public Domain