From whence this fear and unbelief,
If God, my Father, put to grief
His spotless Son for me?
Can He, the righteous Judge of men,
Condemn me for that debt of sin
Which, Lord, was charged to Thee?
Complete atonement Thou hast made,
And to the utmost farthing paid
Whate'er Thy people owed;
How, then, can wrath on me take place,
If sheltered in God's righteousness
And sprinkled by Thy blood?
If Thou hast my discharge procured,
And freely in my place endured
The whole of wrath divine;
Payment God will not twice demand,
First at my bleeding Surety's hand,
And then again at mine.
Turn, turn, then my soul, unto thy rest;
The merits of thy great High Priest
Speak peace and liberty;
Trust in His efficacious blood,
Nor fear thy banishment from God,
Since Jesus died for thee.
The above poem was sent by one of our regular readers -- Amity. It was written by Augustus Montague Toplady. Toplady is best known "musically" for his poem "Rock of Ages, cleft for me", and theologically for his translation and editing of Jerome Zanchius' work "The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted". He was born November 4, 1740, and died August 11, 1778, at the young age of 38. Some sources credit Toplady with two verses of poetry often found with Philip Doddridge's "Grace, 'Tis a Charming Sound".
Grace first inscribed my name
In God’s eternal book;
'Twas grace that gave me to the Lamb,
Who all my sorrows took.
Grace taught my soul to pray
And made mine eyes o'erflow;
'Twas grace which kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.
3 comments:
The hymn is Common Particular Meter -- a six-line stanza of which the first, second, fourth and fifth lines are iambic tetrameter, and the third and sixth lines are iambic trimeter (8.8.6.8.8.6.). I believe there are about four tunes of C.P.M. in the Sacred Harp, -- Refreshing Showers (Nashville, 64), Harmony (172), The Sinner Must Be Born Again (295b) and Southwell (365). There may be others in the 1991 Denson edition.
I have no expertise on the Calvinistic Methodists, so I'll not add much to what Jim wrote. My idea (and it's only that) is that the Methodists would have originally tended toward Calvinism and that the move toward Arminianism and holiness was a development -- certainly a part of John Wesley's developing theology. Based on his hymns (and that only), I'll always thought Charles Wesley seemed to have a "streak" of Calvinism. He seemed much more so than his brother John.
The following links might prove fruitful for future research.
Click on this link for an 1823 Calvinistic Methodist Confession of Faith. Here is another site on the Calvinistic Methodists. One thing I found interesting there is the listing of John Cennick, author of "Children of the heavenly King, As ye journey, sweetly sing; Sing your Savior’s worthy praise, Glorious in His works and ways" and "Jesus, my all, to Heaven is gone, He Whom I fix my hopes upon; His track I see, and I’ll pursue The narrow way, till Him I view." Seems he was a Calvinistic Methodist.
You might also be interested to know that the place where Charles Spurgeon relates his conversion occurring was in a Primitive Methodist Church! Go here to read The Personal Testimony of Charles Spurgeon. The site obviously has a point to make, but the testimony itself is in Spurgeon's own words.
In an article on Methodism, Richard Bucher, pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lexington, KY, writes, "In 1729, John, Charles and a number of other students at Oxford University began meeting regularly in order to develop holiness and perfection by methodical Bible study, prayer, and acts of charity. Other students mockingly referred to them as 'Methodists' or 'the Holy Club'."
This sums up pretty much what I've always heard concerning the origin of "Methodism" and its name.
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