Charles Wesley (1707-88) published this hymn in 1747 in Hymns for Those that Seek, and Those that Have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ. Its opening borrows from the stage. In John Dryden's opera King Arthur (1691), with music by Henry Purcell, Venus sings "Fairest Isle, all Isles Excelling, / Seat of Pleasures, and of Loves." Wesley took the line for Christ: the dwelling place is no longer England but the human heart, and the love is no longer Venus's but "Love divine," the incarnate Son. J. R. Watson observes that Wesley often took secular phrases about love and claimed them for Christ; Erik Routley called Wesley's style a "biblical mosaic." Every stanza prays that Jesus would dwell in us (John 14:23). The second stanza drew objections early. Wesley asked Christ to "take away our power of sinning," which editors softened to "the love of sinning," and his "second rest," a phrase tied to Methodist teaching on perfection, became "Thy promised rest" (Hebrews 4:9). John Wesley dropped that stanza altogether in 1780, but Lutheran hymnals have kept all four. Fred Precht defended them for Lutheran use: the Christian prays these words as one who is at once saint and sinner. LSB sets it to HYFRYDOL ("good cheer"), published by Rowland Hugh Prichard in Wales in 1844.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026