Thou Son of God, Thou Son of man

Verse 1
Thou Son of God, thou Son of man,
Whose eyes are as a flame of fire,
With kind concern regard my pain,
And mark my lab’ring heart’s desire!

Verse 2
Its inmost folds are known to thee,
Its secret plague I need not tell:
Nor can I hide, nor can I flee
The sin I ever groan to feel.

Verse 3
My soul it easily besets,
About my bed, about my way,
My soul at every turn it meets,
And half persuades me to obey.

Verse 4
Nothing I am, and nothing have,
Nothing my helplesness can do;
But thou art good, and strong to save,
And all that seek may find thee true.

Verse 5
How shall I ask, and ask aright?
My lips refuse my heart t’ obey:
But all my wants are in thy sight;
My wants, my fears, my sorrows pray.

Verse 6
I want thy love, I fear thy frown,
My own foul sin I grieve to see:
T’ escape its force would now sink down,
And die, if death could set me free.

Verse 7
Yet O I cannot burst my chain,
Or fly the body of this death:
Immur’d in flesh I still remain,
And gasp a purer air to breathe.

Verse 8
I groan to break my prison-walls,
And quit the tenement of clay;
Nor yet the shatter’d mansion falls,
Nor yet my soul escapes away.

Verse 9
Ah Lord! Wouldst thou within me live,
No longer then should I complain,
Nor sighing wish, nor weeping grieve
For Christ my life, or death my gain.

Verse 10
From grief and sin I then should cease;
My loosen’d tongue should then declare
Comfort, and love, and joy, and peace,
Fill all the soul when Christ is there!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?." Introduced in a hymnal jointly credited to John and Charles Wesley; it is more likely than not that Charles wrote it but not certain. Introduced in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), published by John and Charles Wesley (London: William Strahan, 1740). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 1 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868), page 252.
Publishing: Public Domain