Women, excused from public care

Verse 1
Women excus’d from public care,
Design’d for nobler service seem;
God gives them time, in frequent prayer,
His handmaids, to attend on Him;
And more to piety inclin’d
We always see the gentler kind.

Verse 2
Women we own the foremost still,
Where stated prayer is made, t’ appear,
They first the place of worship fill,
They first the joyful tidings hear,
The welcom messengers receive,
And patterns to the faithful live.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘We went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither.’—Acts 16, v. 13.” 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 314.
Publishing: Public Domain