We are the sweet elected few

I am posting this in hopes those who debate Calvinism & Arminianism here will be founts of information. I am looking for the original source of the following poem (which comes in assorted variations):

We are the Lord’s elected few,
Let all the rest be damned;
There’s room enough in hell for you,
We won’t have heaven crammed!

I find this posted a lot, often with claims that it was a hymn sung by some Christian group (Puritans, Particular Baptists, Calvinists, Brethren, Bible Christians -- take your pick). I highly doubt it -- not because someone couldn't have sung this -- but because most of the sources are fairly recent. The oldest (by far) that I found is the following version from 1898. The one who mentions it says it was supposed to be a verse of one of the hymns of certain sect, but that "my own researches have failed to discover [it] in the songs of the Bible Christian Sion."

We are the sweet elected few:
May all the rest be damned.
There's room enough in hell for you:
We won't have heaven crammed.

In "What Was Primitive Christianity," W. S. Lilly, The Nineteenth Century, Volume 44, No. 259, July-Dec. 1898, p. 503

I found something similar in a secular source, which goes back to at least 1893: "We're Saville Row's selected few, Let all the rest be damned; The pit is good enough for you, We won't have boxes crammed." (The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton)

To me it seems much more likely that this is written as a parody of particular atonement and unconditional election. Have any of you ever actually seen this in an old hymn book?

 

Thanks. Intriguing, again that these, like the Bible Christians, would have been Arminian rather than Calvinistic. Like the other sources I've found so far, I see the author is only attributing without sourcing. But I'm glad to get this reference 20 years further back (and slightly different from the others I've seen).

Hymns on election and reprobation are plentiful in Gadsby and elsewhere. Interesting in itself, but my main interest is whether "We are the sweet elected few: May all the rest be damned" was an actual song sung in churches or just something someone made up to "prove a point."

 

Yes, one example of this is Timothy George in Theology of the Reformers. Written by a dean at Beeson Divinity with a doctor of theology from Harvard, I suppose this would be considered a scholarly work. He is probably the source where many Baptists find this poem attributed to the Particular Baptists.

I think you are probably right. If someone wants to use satire, fine, but authors and speakers shouldn't pass it off as if it were a real hymn.

 

I have run into a strong tradition that the verse is by Jonathan Swift. Unfortunately I have not seen any of them footnote the source, just make the claim.

 

While looking at the Smith & Sleeper hymn book that Jerome linked, I ran across a hymn on baptism that begins "What think you, my friends, of the preaching of John? Say, was it from heaven or was it of men?"

If anyone wants to discuss it, I started a thread on it called Old Baptist Hymn on Baptism.