While gospel-husbandmen repose,
And dream of crowns without the cross,
His tares the adversary sows,
Unmark’d, and unobserv’d withdraws:
The tares produce a sudden crop,
The tares above the wheat increase;
Now, now! we see them Now spring up,
Five hundred perfect witnesses!
While gospel-husbandmen repose
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘While men slept, his enemy sowed tares.’—Matt. 13, v. 25.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.” 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 1977/577, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 28.
Publishing: Public Domain