Who avarice with religion veil

Verse 1
Who avarice with religion veil
Our Saviour’s indignation raise,
Who trade in spirituals, and sell
And buy, as in the holy place;
The altar touch with hands impure,
Present, collate, resign, restore,
Imployments in the church procure,
And change and barter less for more.

Verse 2
Servants of souls, they take the pay
Rapacious, but the work refuse;
They steal, (while meaner hirelings pray,)
And rob the church, whose goods they use:
We read their sacrilege profane
Recorded in the sacred leaves,
Who make the house of God a den
Of R[everend] and R[ight] R[everend] thieves!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.’—Matt. 21, v. 12.” 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 340.
Publishing: Public Domain