Why should the fond admiring throng

Verse 1
Why should the fond admiring throng
On feeble creatures gaze,
If God pronounce a sinner strong
Thro’ his almighty grace?
Not all our holiness or power
Can make the spirit rise,
God only doth to health restore,
And freely justifies.

Verse 2
Jehovah sends by whom he will
As sovereign Lord of all,
His mercy’s counsel to fulfil,
And raise us from our fall:
He oft employs the words of man,
But bids us humbly own
He doth the help on earth ordain,
The work he works alone.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?”—[Acts 3,] v. 12.” This hymn appears in the 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 S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), pages 290-91.
Publishing: Public Domain