The heart unoccupied by God

Verse 1
The heart unoccupied by God,
An open, high, frequented road,
Which every passenger may find,
Trampled, and foul’d by all mankind,
Long-harden’d by habitual sin,
Expos’d to every spirit unclean,
Down to the gloomy realms it tends,
In bottomless perdition ends.

Verse 2
Such is the heart of those that hear
The gospel with a careless ear:
Thick-flocking fiends are always nigh,
Usurpers of the lower sky,
Distractions, cares fly hovering round,
Pleasures the good desire confound,
Seize on the soul, as birds of prey,
And bear the precious seed away.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Some seeds fell by the way-side, and the fowls came, and devoured them up.’—[Matt. 13,] v. 4.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.” 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 1977/577, 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. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 267.
Publishing: Public Domain