Charles Wesley

And Can It Be?

A hymn about free grace, based on St Peter’s release from prison by the hand of an angel.

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St Peter kneeling in prison, by Rembrandt van Rijn.
By Rembrandt van Rijn, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

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And Can It Be?

By Rembrandt van Rijn, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

St Peter kneeling in prison, by Rembrandt van Rijn.

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‘St Peter kneeling in prison’ by Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), painted in 1631. St Luke tells us that shortly after Easter, AD 44, King Herod Agrippa I (a grandson of Herod the Great) arrested St Peter too, and committed him to gaol to await trial and no doubt execution; St James, brother of St John the Evangelist, had already been beheaded in the same purge. See our retelling of the traditional account of Home Page, and St Luke’s own lively tale of Peter’s escape in Jailbreak.

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Introduction

This hymn is one of Charles Wesley’s finest. It draws on St Luke’s account, in the Acts of the Apostles, of St Peter’s release from prison by an angel sent from God, and relates it to the Christian who realises that Jesus Christ has torn up the indictment for sin that stood between them.

Free Grace

AND can it be, that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died He for me? — who caused His pain!
For me? — who Him to death pursued.
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

’Tis mystery all! th’ Immortal dies!
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the first-born seraph tries
To sound the depths of Love Divine.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore;
Let angel minds inquire no more.*

He left His Father’s throne above,
(So free, so infinite His grace!)
Emptied Himself of all but love,*
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free!
For, O my God! it found out me!

Long my imprison’d spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night:
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke; the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and follow’d Thee.*

Still the small inward voice I hear,
That whispers all my sins forgiven;*
Still the atoning blood is near,
That quench’d the wrath of hostile Heaven:*
I feel the life His wounds impart;
I feel my Saviour in my heart.

No condemnation now I dread,*
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine:
Alive in Him, my Living Head,
And clothed in righteousness Divine,
Bold I approach th’ eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ, my own.

* Compare Psalm 131.

* See Philippians 2:4-11.

* This verse recalls the liberation of St Peter from gaol, as described by St Luke in Acts 12:1-10. See Jailbreak.

* See 1 Kings 19:12.

* Heaven is ‘hostile’ because rebellious man keeps it so, whereas God seeks every opportunity to make peace. See James 4:4: “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God”.

* See Romans 8:1.