Thy members must their trial take

Thy members must their trial take,
And suffer, Saviour, for thy sake,
And to thy will submit their own,
The general scorn and hate abide,
Dead to the world and crucified,
Till all their work on earth is done:
The earliest preachers of thy love
Thou woudst not, Lord, from earth remove;
Thy presence from the evil pure
Preserv’d, and kept them in the flame,
Till out of great distress they came,
And made their crown by sufferings sure.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil.’—[John 17,] v. 15." This hymn appears in the 1763-64 manuscript “MS John.” 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 1977/573, 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. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 54.
Publishing: Public Domain