"Come, and Let Us Sweetly Join" is one of Charles Wesley's 166 communion hymns - part of a body of eucharistic poetry that represents the most sustained and doctrinally rich treatment of the Lord's Supper in Protestant hymnody. Wesley's eucharistic theology was unusual in his century: against the tendency of much evangelical Protestantism to treat communion as a memorial only, Wesley insisted that the Lord's Supper was a genuine 'means of grace' - an occasion of real encounter with the risen Christ.
The Composition
This hymn was published in Hymns on the Lord's Supper (1745), a collection of 166 hymns that John and Charles Wesley produced jointly with their friend Daniel Brevint, whose treatise The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice (1672) provided the theological framework. The collection was designed for use at Methodist love feasts and communion services, where Wesley's theology of the eucharist as a converting ordinance was practiced. The hymnbook went through ten editions in Wesley's lifetime and shaped Methodist eucharistic practice for generations.
Biblical Text
Matthew 18:20 - 'For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them' - is the key text. Wesley applies this promise specifically to the eucharistic gathering: when the community assembles at the Lord's Table, Christ himself is present among them. This is not a metaphorical or merely spiritual presence but a real one - the risen Christ fulfilling his own promise in the act of his people's communion.
1 Corinthians 10:17 - 'For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread' - grounds the corporate dimension of the hymn. The hymn's invitation is not to private devotion but to communal sharing: 'come, and let us sweetly join' is a plural invitation, an act of gathering that constitutes the body of Christ in the world. The eucharist is not merely the individual receiving grace but the community being formed.
John 6:56 - 'He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him' - underlies Wesley's high doctrine of eucharistic presence. The bread and wine do not merely represent Christ but are the vehicle of his dwelling in the believer and the believer's dwelling in him. This language of mutual indwelling - Christ in us and we in Christ - is the theological heart of Wesley's eucharistic theology.
The Creator
Charles Wesley (1707-1788) was born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, the eighteenth of Samuel and Susannah Wesley's nineteen children. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he founded the 'Holy Club' that became the nucleus of the Methodist movement. His conversion experience in May 1738 - three days before his brother John's Aldersgate Street experience - released a torrent of hymn writing that continued throughout his life. He is credited with writing over 6,500 hymns, making him the most prolific hymn writer in Christian history. His hymns range from the Christmas theology of 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' to the sacramental depth of the Hymns on the Lord's Supper to the evangelical urgency of 'And Can It Be.'
Eucharistic Theology
The Hymns on the Lord's Supper collection represents a carefully worked-out eucharistic theology that drew on High Church Anglican sources (Brevint, Jeremy Taylor, Thomas Ken) as well as the Eastern Orthodox emphasis on the epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the elements). Wesley's position was neither Roman Catholic transubstantiation nor bare Zwinglian memorialism but something like a 'real presence' that was not located in the elements themselves but was genuinely experienced by the faithful communicant.
This theology made the Lord's Supper evangelistically significant: Wesley argued, controversially, that the Table was not only for confirmed believers but for seeking sinners - that one might come to faith through the eucharist as well as through preaching. The phrase 'converting ordinance' captured this: the eucharist was an occasion not only for believers to receive grace but for unbelievers to encounter Christ.
Musical Settings
The hymn has been set to various tunes. Its short-meter or common-meter structure makes it adaptable to many standard hymn tunes. The gentle invitation of the text is well served by restrained, moderately paced settings that allow the words to be heard clearly.
Legacy
The Hymns on the Lord's Supper collection has had enduring influence on Methodist and broader Protestant eucharistic practice. It maintained a robust theology of real presence and eucharistic sacrifice in a tradition that might otherwise have defaulted to memorialist minimalism. This hymn in particular captures the communal and relational heart of Wesley's eucharistic vision: communion is not a solitary act of spiritual consumption but a gathering in which Christ himself is present among those who come in his name.