Ye adders deaf, who stop your ears

Verse 1
Ye adders deaf, who stop your ears
Against th’ immortal Prophet’s voice,
(That voice which dying sinners chears,
And bids our broken hearts rejoice)
Who nature’s perfect law maintain,
Your own weak reason idolize,
And dare th’ incarnate God disdain,
The God who made both earth and skies:

Verse 2
Ye men who Christ profess to know,
And vainly call him God and Lord,
But will not in his footsteps go,
Or hearken to his Spirit’s word;
Deists, and formalists, who slight
His love, expect his wrath to feel,
Cut off and banish’d from his sight,
Ye both shall shortly meet in hell.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Every soul which will not hear that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.’—[Acts 3,] v. 23.” 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 166.
Publishing: Public Domain