Indelible Grace Hymnbook

Charles Wesley

Born: De­cem­ber 18, 1707, Ep­worth, Lin­coln­shire, Eng­land.

Died: March 29, 1788, Lon­don, Eng­land.

Buried: Mar­y­le­bone Par­ish Church, Lon­don.

Wesley wrote over 6,000 hymns; as with most hym­nists, his works were fre­quent­ly al­tered. In the pre­face to the 1779 Col­lect­ion of Hymns for the Use of the Peo­ple called Meth­od­ists, his bro­ther John wrote:

I beg leave to men­tion a thought which has been long up­on my mind, and which I should long ago have in­sert­ed in the pub­lic pa­pers, had I not been un­will­ing to stir up a nest of horn­ets. Ma­ny gen­tle­men have done my bro­ther and me (though with­out nam­ing us) the hon­our to re­print ma­ny of our hymns. Now they are per­fect­ly wel­come to do so, pro­vid­ed they print them just as they are. But I de­sire they would not at­tempt to mend them, for they are real­ly not able. None of them is able to mend ei­ther the sense or the verse. There­fore, I must beg of them these two fa­vours: ei­ther to let them stand just as they are, to take things for bet­ter or worse, or to add the true read­ing in the mar­gin, or at the bot­tom of the page, that we may no long­er be ac­count­a­ble ei­ther for the non­sense or for the dog­ger­el of other men.

In ad­di­tion to hymn writ­ing, Charles & John found­ed the move­ment which be­came the Meth­od­ist de­nom­in­a­tion.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal