I that am drawn out of the depth

Representative Text

1 I that am drawn out of the depth,
Will sing upon the shore;
I that in hell's dark suburbs lay,
Pure mercy will adore.

2 The terrors of the living God
My soul did so affright;
I feared lest I should be condemned
To an eternal night.

3 Kind was the pity of my friends,
But could not ease my smart;
Their words indeed did reach my case,
But could not reach my heart.

4 Ah, what was then this world to me,
To whom God's word was dark?
Who in my dungeon could not see
One beam or shining spark.

5 What then were all the creatures smiles,
When the Creator frowned?
My days were nights, my life was death,
My being was my wound.

6 Tortured and racked, with hellish fears,
Lest God the blow should give;
Mine eyes did fail, my heart did sink
Then mercy did me live.

The Christian's duty, exhibited in a series of hymns, 1791

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Author: John Mason

Mason, John. The known facts of his life are scanty. He was the son of a Dissenting Minister, and the grandfather of John Mason, the author of A Treatise on Self-Knowledge. He was educated at Strixton School, Northants, and Clare Hall, Cambridge. After taking his M.A., he became Curate of Isham; and in 1668, Vicar of Stantonbury, Bucks. A little more than five years afterwards he was appointed Rector of Water-Stratford. Here he composed the volume containing The Songs of Praise, his paraphrase of The Song of Solomon, and the Poem on Dives and Lazarus, with which Shepherd's Penitential Cries was afterwards bound up. This volume passed through twenty editions. Besides the Songs of Praise, it contains six Penitential Cries by Mason, and it i… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	I that am drawn out of the depth
Author:	John Mason
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

I that am drawn out of the depth. J. Mason. [Deliverance from Spiritual Affliction.] First published in his Songs of Praise, &c, 1683, No. 23, in 5 stanzas of 8 lines and 1 stanza of 4 lines, and entitled "A Song of Praise for Deliverance from Spiritual Troubles." It was repeated in D. Sedgwick's reprint, 1859, p. 43. From this hymn the cento, "God's furnace doth in Zion stand," in Alexander's Augustine Hymn Book, 1849 and 1865, Spurgeon's Our Own Hymn Book, 1866, and others, is taken. It begins with stanza iv. The cento in the American Unitarian Hymn [& Tune] Book for the Church and Home, Boston, 1868, "The world can neither give nor take,' is composed thus :—stanza i. from Mason's "My God, my reconciled God”; and stanzas ii., iii. from this hymn.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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