Who is Worthy?
“Augustus Toplady (1740-78), though a gentle and pious parish priest, was capable of extraordinary bitterness in controversy. He is chiefly remembered today as the author of the hymn ‘Rock of Ages’, but in his own day he was regarded as a fanatical Calvinist with a power of expressing his feelings in the strongest language. His tracts against John Wesley, whom he describes as ‘that hog in armour’, are couched in the language of personal invective of a high order.” – Excerpt from J.R.H. Moorman’s A History of the Church in England
Whenever we read about a well-known person from Church History whom we admire, we will assuredly discover something about him or her that disappoints us deeply. How could such a “gentle and pious parish priest” as Augustus Toplady say such harsh things about John Wesley? John Wesley cared for and ministered to the poor and outcast, he challenged the inwardness and lacklusterness of established Church leaders, for fifty-two years he rode on horseback throughout England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to preach three to four times daily, and he was the minister who felt his “heart strangely warmed” by the working of the Holy Spirit. So why would Augustus speak so coarsely about him?
First of all, John Wesley wasn’t perfect either. He redacted one of Toplady’s works to fit his own theology, without noting he had done so. He was often a my-way-or-the-highway man. All those years he spent riding throughout the country on horseback seem remarkably noble until we remember that he had a wife who separated from him, no doubt in part because of feeling abandoned by him. If Toplady can rightly be described as a “fanatical Calvinist,” John Wesley could certainly be described as a “fanatical Arminian.” Although Wesley never separated from the English Church, he knowingly sowed the seeds of division. His own brothers Charles and Samuel were sometimes deeply troubled by his intractableness. Samuel Wesley wrote, “I am not afraid that the Church will excommunicate him (discipline is at too low an ebb for that) but that he will excommunicate the Church.”
John Wesley and Augustus Toplady were imperfect men, whom the Spirit of God worked through despite their imperfections. Both men understood they had been saved by grace alone. Both men also loved and wrote hymns, though Charles Wesley was by far the more prolific and still-beloved hymn writer. Both men could have happily sung the sweet line from Toplady’s Rock of Ages, “Could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone!”
Our reading from Revelation for Sunday contains these words:
I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.
Only Jesus, the Root of David, was worthy, not Augutus Toplady, not John Wesley, not King David, not any beloved man or woman from all of Church or Biblical history! The Lion of the tribe of Judah loved imperfect people like Toplady and Wesley. He became the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world for imperfect people like Toplady and Wesley. Since he loved them, despite their character flaws, we can too. We also remember to take great joy that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).”
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee!”
John Laffoon
Deacon and
Minister to Youth & Families
Artwork: Lion – Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1612.
National Gallery of Art. Public Domain.