1 Blest be my God that I was born
To hear the gospel sound;
That I was born to be baptized,
And bred on holy ground:
2 That I was bred where God appears
With tokens of his grace;
The lines are fallen unto me
In a most pleasant place.
3 I might have been a pagan bred,
Or else a veiled Jew,
Or cheated with the Al Koran
Amongst the Turkish crew.
4 So in a dungeon dark as night
I might have spent my days;
But thou hast sent me gospel-light,
To thine eternal praise.
5 The sun that rose up in the east,
And drove the shades away,
Its healing wings have reach'd the west,
And turn'd the night to day.
6 Blest be my God for what I see,
My God for what I hear,
I hear such blessed news from heaven
Not earth nor hell I fear.
7 I hear my Lord for me was born,
My Lord for me did die,
My Lord for me did rise again,
And did ascend on high:
8 On high he stands to plead my cause,
And will return again,
And set me on a glorious throne,
And I with him shall reign.
The Christian's duty, exhibited in a series of hymns, 1791
Mason, John. The known facts of his life are scanty. He was the son of a Dissenting Minister, and the grandfather of John Mason, the author of A Treatise on Self-Knowledge. He was educated at Strixton School, Northants, and Clare Hall, Cambridge. After taking his M.A., he became Curate of Isham; and in 1668, Vicar of Stantonbury, Bucks. A little more than five years afterwards he was appointed Rector of Water-Stratford. Here he composed the volume containing The Songs of Praise, his paraphrase of The Song of Solomon, and the Poem on Dives and Lazarus, with which Shepherd's Penitential Cries was afterwards bound up. This volume passed through twenty editions. Besides the Songs of Praise, it contains six Penitential Cries by Mason, and it i… Go to person page >
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