That happy loss I long to know,
To lose myself, a man of woe,
A man of lips and heart unclean,
A wretched man of inbred sin:
O could I gasp my parting breath,
And find myself redeem’d from death,
Impassive, innocent above,
Fill’d with the glorious God of love!
That happy loss I long to know
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Whosoever shall lose his life, shall preserve it.'—[Luke 17,] v. 33.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Luke.” 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 1977/575, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 167.
Publishing: Public Domain