[126]Hymns Ancient and Modern, 553. Altar Hymnal, 151.
[127]Cf. ‘And here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies;’ with verse iv., ‘Take my soul and body’s powers,’ Methodist Hymn-book, 562.
[128]‘The ordinary position of the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ in ancient liturgies was at the beginning, not at the end of the office. It so stood in our own Liturgy down to 1552, when it was placed at the end of the service.... It may be truly said that there is no Liturgy in the world which has so solemn and yet so magnificent a conclusion as our own.’—Proctor and Maclear’s Introduction to the Book of Common Prayer.
[129]Tyerman’s Whitefield, vol. i. p. 465.
[130]Poetical Works, vol. iii.
[131]Tyerman’s Whitefield, vol. i. p. 478.
[132]The hymn has seventeen verses, some of which are, as Whitefield says, ‘very bad.’ Methodist Hymn-book, 65.
[133]Wesley Poetry, vol. iii. p. 60.
[134]Works, vol. xiii.
[135]Poetical Works, vol. iii. p. 78; Methodist Hymn-book, 435.