At Table

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Enslaved to sense, to pleasure prone

Author: Charles Wesley
Tune: ST. FRANCES (Löhr)
Published in 19 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1. Enslaved to sense, to pleasure prone,
Fond of created good,
Father, our helplessness we own,
And trembling taste our food.

2. Trembling we taste; for, ah! no more
To Thee the creatures lead;
Changed, they exert a baneful power,
And poison while they feed.

3. Cursed for the sake of wretched man,
They now engross him whole;
With pleasing force on earth detain,
And sensualize his soul.

4. Groveling on earth we still must lie,
Till Christ the curse repeal;
Till Christ, descending from on high,
Infected nature heal.

5. Come then, our heavenly Adam, come,
Thy healing influence give,
Hallow our food, reverse our doom,
And bid us eat and live!

6. The bondage of corruption break!
For this our spirits groan;
Thy only will we fain would seek,
O, save us from our own!

7. Turn the full stream of nature’s tide:
Let all our actions tend
To Thee, their source; Thy love the guide,
Thy glory be the end.

8. Earth then a scale to Heaven shall be,
Sense shall point out the road,
The creatures all shall lead to Thee,
And all we taste be God.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #1346

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Author: Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley, M.A. was the great hymn-writer of the Wesley family, perhaps, taking quantity and quality into consideration, the great hymn-writer of all ages. Charles Wesley was the youngest son and 18th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, and was born at Epworth Rectory, Dec. 18, 1707. In 1716 he went to Westminster School, being provided with a home and board by his elder brother Samuel, then usher at the school, until 1721, when he was elected King's Scholar, and as such received his board and education free. In 1726 Charles Wesley was elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1729, and became a college tutor. In the early part of the same year his religious impressions were much deepene… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Enslaved to sense, to pleasure prone
Title:	At Table
Author:	Charles Wesley
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Enslaved to sense, to pleasure prone. C. Wesley. [Lent.] This hymn, although of a penitential character, was published as a "Grace before Meat" in Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739, in 8 stanzas of 4 lines. (Poetical Works, 1868-72, vol. i. p. 32.) In the Wesleyan Hymn Book, 1780, it was given as the first hymn of section ii., "For mourners convinced of sin" (No. 104), and as such it was retained in the revised edition of 1875. It is also used as a penitential hymn in several other collections in Great Britain and America. The Grace, "Come then, our heavenly Adam, come," Wesleyan Hymn Book, No. 1009, is stanza v. of this hymn.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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