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Love Constraining To Obedience.

By William Cowper

Topics: classic

No strength of nature can suffice     To serve the Lord aright:     And what she has she misapplies,     For want of clearer light.     How long beneath the law I lay     In bondage and distress!     I toild the precept to obey,     But toild without success.     Then, to abstain from outward sin     Was more than I could do;     Now, if I feel its power within,     I feel I hate it too.     Then, all my servile works were done     A righteousness to raise;     Now, freely chosen in the Son,     I freely choose his ways.     What shall I do, was then the word,     That I may worthier grow?     What shall I render to the Lord?     Is my inquiry now.     To see the law by Christ fulfilld,     And hear his pardoning voice,     Changes a slave into a child,[1]     And duty into choice.

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"No strength of nature can suffice..."

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Author:William Cowper

"No strength of nature can suffice..." by William Cowper

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

William Cowper

About William Cowper

William Cowper (1731–1800) was an English poet and hymnodist whose work bridges the gap between the Augustan age and Romanticism. His poems "The Task" and "John Gilpin" were enormously popular, and his hymn "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" remains widely sung.

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