Depth of mercy! can there be

Depth of mercy! can there be. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). From Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), where it was headed ‘After a Relapse into Sin’. It had thirteen 4-line stanzas. In the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists it was printed in the section ‘Convinced of Backsliding’, moving stanza 8 (‘Whence to me this waste of Love?’) to stanza 4, and omitting stanza 3: I my Master have denied, I afresh have crucified, Oft profan’d his Hallowed Name, Put Him to an open Shame. From the first line onwards, this is an intensely dramatic hymn, contrasting the remorse expressed in stanza 4, 1740 (verse 3, 1780) with the love of the Advocate above, who pleads for him...