Ye reverend thieves and robbers hear

Verse 1
Ye reverend thieves and robbers hear,
Who steal into the church’s fold,
Usurp the sacred character
Thro’ love of ease, or lust of gold,
Or hire yourselves, the flock to feed,
And basely minister for bread!

Verse 2
Not by the Door ye enter in,
Who seek your family to raise,
Or introduc’d by Simon’s sin
Hard labour’—for the highest place:
Ambition climbs that other way,
And all the slaves who serve for pay.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Verily verily I say unto you, He that entreth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’—[John 10,] v. 1." This hymn appears in the 1763-64 manuscript “MS John.” 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 1977/573, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 243.
Publishing: Public Domain