Accept, O Lord, Thy servant's thanks

Bishop Richard Mant wrote the text "Accept, O Lord, Thy servant's thanks" specifically to celebrate the gift of Holy Scripture. The piece stands as one of the original compositions that Mant appended to his major translation work, Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary, which circulated between 1837 and 1871. Within that volume, it was formally designated as the "Hymn of Thanksgiving for Holy Scripture" and structured in 4 stanzas of 8 lines each.

Theologically, the text acts as a clear, poetic reflection of two foundational elements of Anglican liturgy and doctrine. It mirrors the scriptural principles set forth in the Sixth Article of the Articles of Religion, which establishes the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation, and harmonizes with the direct wording of the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent.

The hymn was adopted by Benjamin Hall Kennedy for his Hymnologia Christiana in 1863, appearing as entry Number 1195. Kennedy preserved the vast majority of Mant's original phrasing, with a singular modification in the seventh line of the third stanza. The original line, "And He, Who gave the word, may He," was subtly adjusted to read, "And O, may He Who gave the Word."

Beyond Great Britain, the hymn crossed the Atlantic and secured a place within American worship traditions. It appeared in major mid-nineteenth-century Lutheran collections across the United States, including the notable Pennsylvania Lutheran Church Book published in 1868.