While thus I went on

Verse 5
While thus I went on,
Instantaneously gone
Was the light of thy heavenly face:
My presumption to chide
Thy face thou didst hide,
And withdraw the extatical grace.

Verse 6
My trouble return’d,
And I bitterly mourn’d
The loss of my only Delight,
For thy absence distrest
Above measure opprest,
Overwhelm’d with a mountain of night.

Verse 7
In desertion and grief
I applied for relief
To my God whom I forc’d to depart,
And besought him to hear
With a pitiful ear
The complaint of a sorrowful heart.

Verse 8
Bereft of my peace,
From the deepest abyss
Thy mercy I humbly implore,
A meer sinner forgive
Unworthy to live,
And the help of thy Spirit restore.

Verse 9
What advantage to God,
That I die in my blood,
The reward of iniquity meet?
Will it benefit Thee,
If destruction I see,
And sink into the bottomless pit?

Verse 10
If I perish forgot,
Or my memory rot,
Thy glory I never can show,
Or the truth of thy grace
In torments confess,
To the blasphemous spirits below.

Verse 11
O Saviour, attend,
My affliction to end,
If unchangeable Mercy Thou art,
Discover the blood
That has pacified God,
And apply it again to my heart.

Verse 12
O Jesus, appear,
My Deliverer here,
And assist me again to believe,
And for ever restor’d
To the Sight of my Lord
To the heaven of heavens receive.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘In my prosperity I said, I shall never be removed &c.’—Ps. 30:6. Hymn II. II.” This hymn appears in the 1783 manuscript “MS Scriptural Hymns.” 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 1977/576, 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. 9 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 286.
Publishing: Public Domain