Am I a soldier of the cross

Am I a soldier of the Cross. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).  This was printed in Watts’s Sermons on Various Subjects, Volume III (1729), added to a sermon entitled ‘Holy Fortitude, or Remedies against Fear’. The sermon was on 1 Corinthians 16: 13: ‘Stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong’. The hymn was never included in editions of Watts’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs. It came into hymnbooks with John Rippon*’s A Selection of Hymns from the best authors, intended to be an Appendix to Dr Watts’s Psalms and Hymns (1787). Rippon added other hymns by Watts from ‘Dr Watts’s Sermons’, calling this one ‘Holy Fortitude’. It is a vigorous hymn, especially in stanza 2, where the rhetorical...

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