Because thou hast said

Because thou hast said. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). This hymn arose from a theological controversy. It was published in a pamphlet entitled A Short View of the Difference between the Moravian Brethren, Lately in England, and the Reverend Mr John and Charles Wesley (1745), consisting of 14 pages of John Wesley*’s prose, with six metrical contributions from Charles Wesley appended. Some of these are better described as polemical verses than as hymns. The controversy centred on the doctrine of quietism, which many Moravians had adopted, and which asserted that those who sought ‘justifying faith’ must wait upon God in stillness, not praying, or receiving the Holy Communion, or reading the...