Where social virtue never comes

Verse 1
Where social virtue never comes,
Among the dead in sin he roams,
Nor finds a moment’s rest,
Tortur’d by contrary desires,
Pride, lust, and rage, he stirs the fires
The Tophet in his breast.

Verse 2
How shall he ’scape the hell within?
Th’ intolerable yoke of sin
How can he break, or bear?
O, let him run our Lord to meet,
And worship at his Saviour’s feet,
And cry for mercy there.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘And always day and night he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones &c.’—[Mark 5,] v. 5, 6.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Mark.” 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 1977/574, 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. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 482.
Publishing: Public Domain