The words were inspired by a prayer said by a deacon during the Lord’s Supper in the Liturgy of Malabar, a 5th Century Nestorian rite of the Mar Thomas Christians on the southern coast of India; translated from Syriac to English by Charles W. Humphreys & Percy Dearmer in The English Hymnal (London: Oxford University Press, 1906), number 329.
Ach Gott und Herr, in As Hymnodus Sacer, edited by Christianus Galler (Leipzig, Germany: 1625); adapted & harmonized by Johann S. Bach (MIDI, NWC, PDF).
Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands
That holy things have taken;
Let ears that now have heard thy songs
To clamor never waken.
Lord, may the tongues which Holy
sang
Keep free from all deceiving;
The eyes which saw Thy love be bright
Thy blessèd hope perceiving.
The feet that tread Thy holy courts
From light do Thou not banish;
The bodies by Thy body fed
With Thy new life replenish.