Wesley Corpus

Suffice the season past, that dead to God He glided down the easy spacious road; A willing alien from the life divine Liv'd to himself, and fed on husks with swine: The times of ignorance and sin are past, The son obeys his Father's voice at last, All heaven congratulates his late return, Angels and God rejoice, and men and devils mourn. Mourn the goodnatur'd soft voluptuous crowd, Whose shame their boast, whose belly is their God, Who eat, and drink, and then rise up to play, And dance, and sing their worthless lives away, Harmless; of gentle birth; and bred so well They here sleep out their time, and wake in hell. Page 12 These thoughtless souls his happy change deplor'd, And curs'd the men that call'd him to his Lord; (The troublers of a quiet neighbourhood, The cruel enemies to flesh and blood, Who vex the world, and turn it upside down, And make the peer as humble as the clown.) His bleeding Lord engross'd his whole esteem, Where Jesus dwells there is no room for them: His house no more the scene of soft excess, Of courtly pleasures, and luxurious ease: No longer doth their friend like Dives fare, No drunken hospitality is there, No revellings that turn the night to day, (Harmless diversions from the narrow way!) No midnight dance prophan'd the hallow'd place, No voice was heard, but that of prayer and praise. Divinely taught to make the sober feast, He pass'd the rich, and call'd a nobler guest; He call'd the poor, the maim'd, the lame, the blind, He call'd in these the Saviour of mankind; His friends and kinsmen these for Jesu's sake, Who no voluptuous recompence could make, But God the glorious recompence hath given, And call'd him to the marriage-feast in heaven. Page 13 Ye men that live in riotous excess, And loosely take your pleasurable ease,