How can a sinner know

How can a sinner know. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). First published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), in eight 8-line stanzas, entitled ‘The Marks of Faith’. The full original text, which was reproduced in Hymns for those to whom Christ is all in all (1761), is printed in Frank Baker, Representative Verse of Charles Wesley (1962), pp. 194ff. In John Wesley*’s A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), the metre was changed from 6.6.6.6.8.6.8.6. to double short metre by the addition of two syllables in the third line and the omission of two in the fifth, thus, in Baker’s words, transforming ‘“a sacred poem” into a stirring hymn’. Stanza 3 is an example:...

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