Wesley Corpus

How shall a sinner come to God? A fountain of polluted blood For years my plague hath been, From Adam the infection came, My nature is with his the same, The same with his my sin. In me the stubborn evil reigns, The poison spreads throughout my veins, A loathsom sore disease, Makes all my soul, and life unclean, My every word, work, thought is sin, And desp'rate wickedness. 95Published previously as "The Bloody Issue," in Extract of John Wesley's Journal, No. 4 (London: Strahan, 1744), 118-20. Manuscript precursors appear in MS Shent, 105a-106b; and MS Thirty, 164-68. Page 169 Long have I liv'd in grief and pain, And suffer'd many things in vain, And all physicians tried; Nor men nor means my soul can heal, The plague is still incurable, The fountain is undried. No help can I from these receive, Nor men nor means can e'er relieve, Or give my spirit ease; Still worse and worse my case I find; Here then I cast them all behind, From all my works I cease. I use, but trust in means no more, Give my self-saving labours o'er, Th' unequal task forbear; My strength is spent, my strife is past, Hardly I give up all at last, And yield to self-despair. I find brought in a better hope, Succour there is for me laid up, For every helpless soul; Salvation is in Jesu's name, Could I but touch his garment's hem, Ev'n I should be made whole. His body doth the cure dispense, His garment is the ordinance In which he deigns t' appear; The word, the prayer, the broken bread, Virtue from him doth here proceed, And I shall find him here. I follow'd with the thoughtless throng, And press'd, and crowded him too long, Page 170 And weigh'd him down with sin; But him I did not hope to touch, I never us'd the means as such, Or look'd to be made clean. The spirit of an healthful mind I waited not in them to find, The bread that comes from heaven; Beyond my form I did not go, The power of godliness to know, And feel my sins forgiven.