Yet still the chief of saints below

Verse 1
Yet still the chief of saints below
Will ne’er his former sins forget,
But while his joyful eyes or’eflow,
Prostrate at his dear Saviour’s feet,
The chief of saints will humbly cry,
Will feel “The chief of sinners I.”

Verse 2
Whoe’er their own perfection boast
“We have not sin’d,” they proudly say,
Demonstrate that their faith is lost,
Their shield is vilely cast away;
And who their God bely, blaspheme,
His word no longer is in Them.

Verse 3
Himself doth in his word declare
That all have sin’d, and lost his grace,
And tho’ we truly pardon’d are,
Our pardon’d sins we still confess,
In joy repent, in triumph grieve,
And cease at once to mourn, and live.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘If we say, we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.’—[1 John] 1:10.” This hymn appears in the 1783 manuscript “MS Scriptural Hymns.” 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 1977/576, 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. 13 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1872), page 196.
Publishing: Public Domain