Woe to you whom all commend

Verse 1
Wo to you whom all commend:
Prudent to preserve your fame,
Fav’rites of the world your friend,
Foes to Jesus and his shame,
Souls for air and fire ye sell,
Air on earth, and fire in hell.

Verse 2
So the lying prophets liv’d,
Honour’d in the days of old,
They their praise from men receiv’d,
They their souls for nothing sold:
You with them your doom shall mourn,
Rais’d to everlasting scorn.

Verse 3
Wo to you, eternal wo,
Idoliz’d by flattering men!
Go, with the false prophets go
To the dark infernal den,
Howl in blasphemous despair,
Hiss’d by all the serpents there!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Wo unto you when all men shall speak well of you: for so did their fathers to the false prophets.'—[Luke 6,] v. 26.” 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 152.
Publishing: Public Domain