Unawed by man’s authority

Verse 1
Unawed by man’s authority,
Unable to forbear,
What we have seen and heard of Thee,
Our God, we must declare:
Who have thy great salvation seen,
And heard the Lord from heaven,
We tell the sinful sons of men
They all may live forgiven.

Verse 2
The bleeding Lamb before our eyes
Set forth we have beheld,
And heard his dead-reviving cries,
And felt our pardon seal’d:
We speak as Jesus witnesses,
His power on others shown,
And testify the works of grace
He hath for thousands done.

Verse 3
We speak because we have believ’d,
So freely justified
Forgiveness thro’ his blood receiv’d
His precious blood applied:
The balmy virtue of his death
We must thro’ life proclaim,
And publish with our latest breath
The all-redeeming Lamb!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”—[Acts 4,] v. 20. This hymn appears in the 1764 manuscript “MS Acts.” 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 1977/555, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). 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 176.
Publishing: Public Domain