When man cast off his Maker’s yoke

Verse 1
When man cast off his Maker’s yoke,
Inferior form’d to God alone,
By reason and his God forsook,
Silver, and gold, and wood, and stone
His sordid deities he made,
Senseless as that to which he pray’d.

Verse 2
When Christians lukewarm grown and cold,
Their Saviour neither lov’d, nor fear’d
Grosser than all the Pagans old
Th’ idolatries of Rome appear’d,
And taught the superstitious croud
That man might make—and eat—his god!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone graven by art, and man’s device.’—[Acts 17,] v. 29." 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 343.
Publishing: Public Domain