Wesley Corpus

To speak more freely still: where is the justice of coupling the hymns of Methodists and Moravians together Lay prejudice aside, and read with candor but the very first hymn in our first Hymn-Book [Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739. These lines are from the opening poem, ‘Eupolis Hymn to the Creator,’ by Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth.]; and then say whether your prose is not as nearly allied to John Bunyan’s as our verse to Count Zinzendorf’s. As probably you have never seen the books which you condemn, I will transcribe a few lines:- Thee, when morning greets the skies With rosy cheeks and humid eyes; Thee when sweet declining day Sinks in purple waves away; Thee will I sing, O Parent Jove, And teach the world to praise and love. Yonder azure vault on high, Yonder blue, low, liquid sky, Earth, on its firm basis placed, And with circling waves embraced, All Creating Power confer, All their mighty Maker bless. Thou shak’st all nature with Thy nod; Sea, earth, and air confess the God: Yet does Thy powerful hand sustain Both earth and heaven, both firm and main. The feathered souls that swim the air, And bathe in liquid ether there; The lark, precentor of their choir, Leading them higher still and higher, Listen and learn; the angelic notes Repeating in their warbling throats: And, ere to soft repose they go, Teach them to their lords below. On the green turf, their mossy nest, The evening anthem swells their breast. Thus, like Thy golden chain from high, Thy praise unites the earth and sky. O ye nurses of soft dreams, Reedy brooks, and winding streams; Or murmuring o’er the pebbles sheen, Or sliding through the meadows green, Or where through matted sedge you creep, Traveling to your parent deep; Sound His praise by whom you rose, That Sea which neither ebs nor flows. O ye immortal woods and groves, Which the enamored student loves; Beneath whose venerable shade, For thought and friendly converse made, Famed Hecadem, old hero, lies, Whose shrine is shaded from the skies And, through the gloom of silent night, Projects from far its trembling light; You, whose roots descend as low As high in air your branches grow, Your leafy arms to heaven extend, Bend your heads, in homage bend; Cedars and pines that wave above, And the oak beloved of Jove!