Whose hope on ignorance is built,
Upon a broken reed he leans,
It never can exempt from guilt,
Or save him from his damning sins:
It cannot quench or cool his hell,
Or mitigate his sad despair,
Far hotter flames that others feel,
And dwell in fiercer torments there.
Whose hope on ignorance is built
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.'—[Luke 12,] v. 48.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Luke.” 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 1977/575, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 141.
Publishing: Public Domain