Try me, O Lord, and search my Heart

Verse 1
Try me, O Lord, and search my Heart,
Nor let me my own Soul deceive,
Tell me, Omniscient as Thou art,
Do I indeed my Foes forgive,
As GOD in Grace divinely free,
Hath for thy sake forgiven me!

Verse 2
Is it for thy dear sake alone
My most injurious Foes I love?
Or aim I at my own Renown,
And mimick what I must approve,
While by a specious shew I hide
The Baseness of vindictive Pride.

Verse 3
It speaks a weak ignoble Soul
Injurious Evil to return:
But do I, Lord, my Wrath controul,
With-held by honourable Scorn,
And skilfully my Sore conceal,
Too proud to tell the Pain I feel.

Verse 4
I am not now condemn’d within,
Or conscious of the Ill I fear,
Pure of the Unforgiving Sin,
Thow knowst I think myself sincere:
But make me, Jesus, as Thou art,
But bless me with a simple Heart.

Verse 5
O could I view them with thine eyes
Thine eyes, before they clos’d in death,
Embrace my mortal enemies
And bless them with my latest breath,
And die, that they may live forgiven,
May follow, whom they send, to heaven.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “Another [For his Enemies].” This hymn appears in the mid-1750s manuscript “MS Richmond.” 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 1977/551, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 1 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1988), pages 269-70.
Publishing: Public Domain