1 God of truth, and power, and love,
Father, friend of all mankind,
Let on me Thy Spirit move,
Influence my feeble mind;
’Twixt the serpent’s seed and me
Prevalently interpose,
Break the fatal amity,
Make us everlasting foes.
2 Sin hath poisoned all my soul,
Sin, the serpent’s cursèd seed:
No one part in me is whole,
Yet will I the promise plead;
Promise of all-saving grace,
Promise of an inward power,
Able to redeem the race,
Me, and all men to restore.
3 Breathe the breath of simple life,
Oh! Be Abel born in me
Previous to the legal strife,
Innocent simplicity:
Give me childishness to oppose
All the subtle serpent’s art;
Childishness no evil knows,
Give me, Lord, a simple heart.
4 Or if pride hath this destroyed
Turned into self-righteousness,
Let the law supply the void,
Seth succeed in Abel’s place.
Deeply root Thy law within
Parent of the wretched man;
Check my forwardness to sin,
Forcibly by fear restrain.
5 Bind in me the strong-man bind
With the fetters of the law;
Curb and thwart the carnal mind,
Keep the man of sin in awe;
Enemy to all that’s good,
He can only be subdued
By the sense of pardoning grace;
Never will he quite give place.
6 Tell me Jesus died for me,
Show some token of His love;
Love and sin can never agree,
Love shall still the stronger prove:
Love in the first measure give,
Sin shall then no longer sway,
Flesh may for a season strive,
I the Spirit shall obey.
7 Patiently I then shall wait
For the woman’s noblest seed,
Jesus Christ the mighty hate,
Bruiser of the serpent’s head;
O reveal Thy Son in me,
Bring the perfect nature in,
Now destroy the enmity,
Now consume the man of sin.
8 Adam, flesh, and self, and pride,
Antichrist, perdition’s son,
Let him not in me abide,
Cast him out, and reign alone;
Slay the dragon in the sea,
Make my soul Thy pure abode,
Filled with all the deity,
Swallowed up, and lost in God.
Source: The Cyber Hymnal #11114
Charles Wesley, M.A. was the great hymn-writer of the Wesley family, perhaps, taking quantity and quality into consideration, the great hymn-writer of all ages. Charles Wesley was the youngest son and 18th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, and was born at Epworth Rectory, Dec. 18, 1707. In 1716 he went to Westminster School, being provided with a home and board by his elder brother Samuel, then usher at the school, until 1721, when he was elected King's Scholar, and as such received his board and education free. In 1726 Charles Wesley was elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1729, and became a college tutor. In the early part of the same year his religious impressions were much deepene… Go to person page >
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