Wesley Corpus

Your sins for vengeance call, Your sins the scourge demand, Your sins have judgment brought on all The sad polluted land: Curst for your only sake The earth reels to and fro, And lo! Its deep foundations shake, And Tophet yawns below. Page 8 The nations to rebuke, When God his power displays, Earth trembles at his threatning look, And moves, and shifts its place: Infernal thunders roar, And speak his kindled ire, And hills dissolve like wax before The sin-consuming fire. Who can escape the wreck In that vindictive day! The mountains at his presence quake, The mountains flee away; The rocks he rends and tears, And violently throws down, And nature in convulsions bears The terror of his frown. Strong towers, and massy walls, From their foundations leap, The heaven-invading city falls Into a ruinous heap; His destin'd prey to seize, Old ocean bursts his chain, The fountains of the great abyss Are broken up again. Page 9 On hell's apparent brink Who shall the sinner save? Cities, and men, and kingdoms sink Into a common grave: What man the earth survives, The earth to chaos hurl'd, While final ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o'er the world! One only place remains, And always shall endure, A place where peace and safety reigns, And sinners rest secure, An hidden place above, Where once the prophet stood, And saw the majesty of love, And saw the passing God. Hither, ye worms, come up, Who from his judgments fly, And meet him on the mountain top, And on his love rely; Safe in the sacred Rock, Look down on all beneath, And at destruction smile, and mock The pointless darts of death. Page 10 2"Clifts" changed to "clefts" in 2nd edn. London (1756) only. What though the earth remove, Believers cannot fear, Hid in the clifts2 of dying love, While death, and hell are near; An house believers have Eternal in the skies, And find a life beyond the grave, A life that never dies. Hymn V. How vain, great God, and worse than vain, How sinful our pretended pain In this our evil day! Unless we to our smiter turn, The cause of all our evils mourn, And cast our sins away.