On Clemens Alexandrinus's Description of a Perfect Christian

Here from afar the finish'd height
Of holiness is seen:
But, O! what heavy tracts of toil.
What deserts lie between?

Man for the simple life Divine
What will it cost to break;
Ere pleasure soft and wily pride
No more within him speak?

What lingering anguish must corrode
The root of nature's joy?
What secret shame and dire defeats
The pride of heart destroy?

Learn thou the whole of mortal state
In stillness to sustain;
Nor soothe with false delights of earth
Whom God has doom'd to pain.

Thy mind now multitude of thoughts,
Now stupor shall distress;
The venom of each latent vice
Wild images impress.

Yet darkly safe with God thy soul
His arm still onward bears,
Till through each tempest on her face
A peace beneath appears.

Tis in that peace we see and act
By instincts from above;
With finer taste of wisdom fraught,
And mystic powers of love.

Gambold's Works before referred to; but the place which they
occupy in the " Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems," among
other poems of Gambold, and apart from those which are after
wards claimed for J. and C. W., makes it highly probable that,

though his name is not prefixed, Wesley knew them to be the
productions of his early friend. Clement's Description of a
perfect Christian will be found in the Fourth Book of his
"Stromata," or Miscellanies.

Yet ask not in mere ease and pomp
Of ghostly gifts to shine:
Till death the lownesses of man,
And decent griefs are thine.