Take back my interest in Thy blood,
Unless it streamed for all the race.
With a true controversial instinct, the Wesleys fastened upon Calvin’s phrase ‘decretum horribile,’ and, preferring to transliterate rather than to translate, turned again and again to rend it.
A poem describing the possibilities of evil in the human heart and mind comes to a climax thus—
I could the devil’s law receive,
Unless restrained by Thee;
I could (good God!) I could believe
The Horrible Decree.
I could believe that God is hate—
The God of love and grace