Who can the sudden turns explain

Verse 1
Who can the sudden turns explain,
Or trust the various hearts of men?
This hour they cry with sacred fear
“The gods in human shape appear!”
The next they contradict the word,
And persecute whom they ador’d,
Curses instead of praises give,
And stone the wretch not fit to live.

Verse 2
And can a messenger be proud,
Extol’d by the admiring croud
Honours divine with joy receive,
Which sinners blasphemously give?
Ah no: the praise that comes from men
Exchanging for reproach and pain,
He would be like th’ Apostle tried,
And rather slain than deified.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled “Having stoned Paul, they drew him out of the city.”—[Acts] xiv. 19. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2 (Bristol: Farley, 1762). Wesley combined this with "And Can a Messenger Be Proud" for a combined hymn in his 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 291.
Publishing: Public Domain