AUGUSTUS TOPLADY – THE SAINTLY SINNER

By Revd. Paul E. G. Cook, B.D.

From the Annual Lecture of the Evangelical Library, London,
1978 by Rev. Paul E. G. Cook, B.D.,U.K.

BLESSED be thy Name, O most righteous Lord… Make me not to err, as some other schoolboys do. Suffer me not to be tempted by my own heart’s lusts, or by the dissuasions of bad company; arm me against their snares, and grant I may keep a watch over myself, never to perpetrate any crime. Grant I may never fall from Thee; nor leave so kind, so bountiful, so faithful a Master as Thou art! Amen.’ (7th April, 1752). These words were written by Augustus Toplady in a private diary he kept, before he was converted, whilst at Westminster School, when he was only eleven years old. Apart from providing hints that the boy who wrote them was something of a prodigy, they reveal a highly sensitive nature, great strength of character and a panting after God, which were the abiding characteristics of his life.

Who was this remarkable child? He was the son of a British Army Major who died of yellow fever at the ill-fated siege of Cartagena four months after his son was born. His mother, a clergyman’s daughter, had moved to Farnham in Surrey to be with friends, and it was there that Augustus Montague Toplady was born on 4th November, 1740. When he was about ten years of age his mother sent him to the Westminster School, at about the time William Cowper would have been leaving. At school he early developed those habits of intensive study which remained with him throughout life. He tried his hand at composing some sermons, a number of poems and hymns, and also wrote several plays which he had the temerity to take to David Garrick, the great eighteenth century actor. His critical faculties, which later were to be used to such devastating effect, were rapidly developing. After listening to a long and boring sermon preached by the Bishop of Bangor, he remarked that the only good thing about it was when the Bishop said, ‘To conclude.. .’!

In 1755 his mother had to visit Ireland to settle some affairs in connection with an estate she owned. It conveniently coincided with the end of his course at Westminster School, so that on arrival in Ireland he entered Trinity College, Dublin, to continue his education. It was in Ireland, after having been there a year, that the most important event of his life took place. Visiting his mother’s estate in the county of Wexford he attended an evangelistic meeting held in a barn at a place called Cooladine. The preacher, who some have claimed was a follower of Wesley though Toplady himself denied this, was a certain James Morris, a man of great natural abilities and spiritual unction and preached with great power. Years later, reflecting upon the event, Toplady wrote, ”At night, after my return from Exeter, my desires were strongly drawn out, and drawn up to God. I could, indeed, say, that I groaned with groans of love, joy and peace; but so it was, even with comfortable groans that cannot be uttered. That sweet text, Ephesians 2:13, “Ye, who sometimes were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ”, was particularly delightful and refreshing to my soul; and the more so, as it reminded me of the days and months that are past, even the days of my sensible espousals to the Bridegroom of the elect. It was from that passage that Mr. Morris preached on the memorable evening of my effectual call; by the grace of God, under the ministry of that dear messenger, and under that sermon, I was, I trust, brought nigh by the blood of Christ, in August 1756.” (29th February, 1768).

He took his B.A. degree in the spring of 1760, and in the August returned with his mother to London. The next two years seem to have been spent in furthering his studies for entry into the Church of England ministry and listening to notable preachers. The evening of the same day on which he arrived back in London he heard Whitefield preach at the Tottenham Court Road Tabernacle. It was, he records, “A glorious sermon on ‘But be filled with the Spirit'” and continues, “The wonderful power with which he was enabled to speak showed that he was filled with the Spirit indeed.” He continued to hear Whitefield as often as he could. Another preacher whose ministry he frequently attended was that of Dr. John Gill at Carter Lane, Southwark, to whom he refers as ‘this great man of God’. But it was to William Romaine, preaching in the New Way Episcopal Chapel, close to where he and his mother lived, that he owed his greatest debt. Toplady was one of his most enthusiastic hearers.

On 5th June, 1762, Toplady was ordained and licensed to the curacy of Blagdon in Somerset. The word means ‘Bleak Hill’ and when I visited the village in April this year [1978] it lived up to its name with snow swirling around the Mendip Hills. A short walk away from the village is Burrington Coombe, one of the most awe-inspiring ravines for which the Mendip is so famous. It has been incorrectly associated with the origin of Toplady’s famous hymn, ‘Rock of Ages’. The story that he composed this hymn on the back of a playing card whilst sheltering from a storm in this gorge was first circulated, it seems, by a wealthy Somerset landowner more than seventy years after Toplady’s death. I have come across no reference to this delightful myth in any books or articles on Toplady before the year 1900. Moreover, Dr. H.B. Swete, a distinguished Professor of Divinity at Cambridge who served as curate to his father in the village of BIagdon from 1858-65 was unable to verify the tradition. It is a good guide’s tale with which to regale American tourists on their way to Cheddar, but no more than that! What is far more likely is that Toplady, who was proficient in Hebrew, received his inspiration for the hymn from a possible translation of Isaiah 26: 4, ‘the Lord Jehovah is a rock of ages’. In Isaiah 26 the context is the grace of God, as in the hymn, and not divine providence as in the mythical story. The thought of God as the Rock of ages figures prominently in Toplady’s sermons and writings.

After two years in Blagdon, Toplady moved to Farley (now Farleigh) Hungerford, a beautiful hamlet eight miles south of Bath. He stayed for only a year, but in that time he seems to have endeared himself to the inhabitants, as appears to be the case in all the places where he ministered. He left Farley Hungerford to stay in London for a year, but his departure was marked by an unusual manifestation of the power of God. He writes, “The day before I left the west, was a day much to be remembered. I was greatly enlarged in taking leave of the people, to many of whom God seems to have given a hearing ear. I administered the Lord’s Supper to a number of weeping communicants; nor do I remember if that ordinance was ever accompanied with so signal a blessing to my own soul. The gracious melting appeared to be general; and the overpowering flame of holy love was, I believe, caught from heart to heart. We seemed to sit under the Saviour’s shadow with delight; and his fruit was pleasant to our taste.”

After having spent twelve months in London listening to Romaine and Gill he was appointed as vicar of Fen (now Venn) Ottery and Harpford, two small villages buried in the Devonshire countryside between Ottery St.Mary and Sidmouth. Harpford, the largest village, with a population of 200 in Toplady’s day, still has many of the thatched cottages in which members of his congregation would have lived. Toplady ministered in these villages from May 1766 to April 1768. From the Diary he began to keep towards the end of this period it is obvious that his preaching was accompanied with great blessing, and that his congregations were drawn from a fairly large area. There are frequent references to ‘exceedingly large congregations’. He generally preached for 40-50 minutes and saw many conversions which he attributed to the doctrine of predestination which he began to introduce more explicitly into his preaching.

One interesting feature of his spiritual life at this time, and also later at Broad Hembury, was what he called his ‘Saturday-Assurances’. But let Toplady explain; “I have often been dejected and fearful at the approach of a sabbath on which I was to minister publicly; and God has frequently, not to say generally, been better to me than my unbelieving fears; but on those happy days… when previous assurances have been given me of his help and presence on the Sunday following, those assurances have always been made good. The Lord has often disappointed my doubts, and the evil surmisings of unbelief; but he never once disappointed my hope, when he has said previously to my soul, ‘I will be with thee’.” (9th July, 1768). An example of this is recorded in his Diary as follows: ‘Saturday 27th (August, 1768). In secret prayer, tonight, God gave me a Saturday assurance of a blessing tomorrow; and I was enabled to believe that it would be unto me even as the Lord had said.’

‘Sunday 28th. Read prayers, and preached, both parts of the day, with uncommon strength of body, and with vast enlargement of soul. Between morning and afternoon service, being in my study, and comfortably engaged in secret prayer, the Lord visited me with a refreshing shower of divine love; so that my soul was like a watered garden. I never felt so intense a desire to be useful to the souls of my people; my heart was expanded and burnt with zeal, for the glory of God, and for the spiritual welfare of my flock. I wished to spend and be spent in the ministry of the Word; and had some gracious assurances from on high that God would make use of me to diffuse his gospel, and call in some of his chosen that are yet unconverted. In the afternoon, the congregation was exceedingly great indeed. I was all on fire for God; and the fire, I verily believe, caught from heart to heart. I am astonished, when I review the blessings of this Lord’s day.’

The villages of Fen Ottery and Harpford were unhealthily damp, and during his time there the first symptoms of tuberculosis, from which eventually he died ten years later, began to appear. He also suffered some unease of conscience at the way in which the livings of Fen Ottery and Harpford had been secured for him. This led to an exchange of livings, so that in April 1768 he became the vicar of Broad Hembury, some eight miles to the north and mid-way between Cullompton and Honiton. To drive along the narrow Devonshire lanes to Broad Hembury with its ancient thatched cottages and sparkling stream which runs through the village centre is to have the feeling of stepping back into eighteenth century England. The village has changed little since Toplady’s day with its picture-book beauty. It is one of the most unspoiIt of Devon’s delightful villages. Toplady was vicar of Broad Hembury for ten years until his death in 1778, but the time he spent in the place can hardly have amounted to more than two years. For most of the time he was away in London having left the parish in the charge of a curate.

With a population of no more than two hundred it is hardly surprising that Toplady sought greater scope for the exercise of his prodigious gifts. Thomas Wright, his best biographer, likens him in Broad Hembury to ‘a caged tiger’. He had already begun to exercise great influence despite the fact that for six years he had been confined to mere hamlets and insignificant villages.The time had come for this man, so greatly gifted by God, to emerge from relative obscurity to enter a larger sphere of usefulness. Frequent invitations to preach in London had been eagerly accepted and, like the Dissenters with whom he had so much in common, he was willing to move about as a preacher.

Eventually, in 1775, he moved to London where, apart from occasional visits to Broad Hembury, he spent the rest of his short life.

We can be thankful that Toplady never married, because he would probably have made a bad choice, judging from a passing infatuation he had for the widowed historian, Mrs. Catherine Macauley, a fashionable society woman, upon whom Toplady, in common with other men caught by the deceitful charms of this vain creature, heaped undeserved praise and flattery. His spirituality saved him in this instance from his usual impetuosity.

Toplady was a magnetic and melodious preacher, whose imaginative sermons were delivered with much feeling, eloquence and forcefulness. He preached with great earnestness and a pathos which never failed to move and captivate his hearers. Wherever he went crowds flocked to hear him. His presence was dignified and his manner serious, and yet he had a charm and mastery of language, which coupled with a deep concern for people endeared him to his congregations. The most significant and influential period of his preaching ministry was from April 1776 until his death. His admirers and friends had secured for him the use of the French Huguenot-Orange Street Chapel (now called: Orange Street Congregational Church) in Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square). Many influential people lived in what was then a fashionable area of London and attended Toplady’s preaching, including Sir Joshua Reynolds and David Garrick occasionally. He preached regularly in Orange Street Chapel to overflowing congregations of 1200-1500 people for a period of two years until he was removed by sickness and then death at the early age of 37.

Such are the bare factual and chronological details of the life and ministry of Augustus Toplady. We must now seek to assess the character and contributions of this eighteenth century evangelical leader, for such he soon became, and take note of any lessons applicable to our own day. He was a man of many parts, endowed with great intellectual ability, with outstanding preaching and literary gifts. Moreover, his mind was incisive and this together with his highly developed critical faculty and moral courage made him a man who was in some senses more feared than loved. We shall consider him first as a hymn-writer, then as a controversialist, and finally as a saint.

Toplady The Hymn-Writer

In 1759, when only eighteen years old, Toplady had a small volume of hymns and Scripture paraphrases published in Dublin under the title, ‘Poems on Sacred Subjects’. Some of its contents had been composed when he was only fifteen years of age, but though the book lacks maturity his poetic gift is clearly in evidence. He continued writing hymns throughout his life of which about 150 have survived. Many were first published in the ‘Gospel Magazine’ between the years 1771-76.

The hymns of Watts and Wesley are in a category of their own, but Toplady certainly stands with the other great English hymn-writers of the eighteenth century:Doddridge, Cowper and Newton. Unlike most eighteenth century hymn-writers Toplady was not cast in the mould of Watts. His style is distinctively his own. It is somewhat ponderous at times and this gives a heaviness of rhythm to some of his hymns, of which ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘A debtor to mercy alone’ are good examples. To some extent this is due to the weight of doctrine carried by the hymns. But he lacks the poetic brilliance and versatility of Wesley, and is occasionally somewhat stilted in his manner of expression, though he lacks nothing of Wesley’s warmth and holy fire.

His hymns are characteristically forceful, with strong arresting opening lines, which encourage expectations rarely disappointed. In a book of hymns, selected by him from over forty hymn books, and published in 1776, Toplady maintains that a good hymn can ‘only be written by a spiritual person under the impressions of spiritual influence.’ All his own hymns bear this stamp. They have a divine unction upon them, and carry a beauty, pathos and warmth of spiritual experience which strikes a chord in the believer’s heart. Listen, for example, to these verses, taken from his well-known hymn, ‘Your harps ye trembling saints’:

‘By anxious fear depressed,
When from the deep, ye mourn,
“Lord, why so hasty to depart,
So tedious in return?”
Still on his plighted love,
At all events rely;
The very hidings of his face
Shall train thee up to joy.
‘Wait, till the shadows flee;
Wait, thy appointed hour;
Wait, till the Bridegroom of thy soul
Reveals his love with power.
The time of love will come,
When thou shalt clearly see,
Not only that he shed his blood,
But that it flowed for thee!’

No hymn-writer has expressed with greater clarity the doctrine of salvation by grace alone upon the basis of the penal substitutionary atonement. The second verse of ‘Fountain of never-ceasing grace’ expresses it magnificently:

‘Whom heaven’s angelic host adores,
Was slaughtered for our sin;
The guilt, O, Lord,was wholly ours,
The punishment was thine;
Our God in flesh, to set us free,
Was manifested here;
And meekly bore our sins that we
His righteousness might wear.’

Unlike the hymns of Anne Steele, the bi-centenary of whose death also falls this year [1978], Toplady’s hymns ring with a strong assurance. His clear understanding of the character of salvation and his own spiritual experience of the witness of the Spirit are surely responsible for this. Its strength in ‘A debtor to mercy alone’ is so great that apart from an awareness of the biblical doctrines by which it is supported, the last verse might be thought by some to suggest an unwarranted presumption:

‘My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on his heart it remains,
In marks of indelible grace;
Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given;
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heaven.’

–‘indelible grace’– what an inspired phrase that is!

His hymns are well-suited for the needs of ‘trembling saints’, and equally fitted for those who feel secure within the ‘Rock of Ages’. This latter hymn, which has made his name famous, was first published in its complete form in the ‘Gospel Magazine’ for March 1776 when, for a few months, he was its editor. In addition to this great hymn, he wrote others which are among the best in the English language, such as:

‘Compared with Christ, in all besides no comeliness I see’.
‘Happiness thou lovely name’ -better known by the first line of its second verse, ‘Object of my first desire’.
‘A debtor to mercy alone.’
‘A sovereign Protector I have’ – after having been purged of the ‘frail eyelids’ of Toplady’s opening line, and verses 1 and 2 reduced to one verse.

Unlike Wesley, Toplady can frequently be improved with editorial skill. ‘How vast the benefits divine’ in its known form is a good illustration of this.

Some of his compositions were not written to be sung, and what is perhaps his greatest, falls into this category; a poetic contemplation on Revelation 7:9-17 entitled, “I saw, and lo! a countless throng”. I cannot forbear quoting his beautiful and moving sixth stanza:

‘Loved while on earth; nor less beloved though gone,
Think not I envy you your crown;
No; if I could, I would not call you down.
Though slower is my pace,
To you I’ll follow on,
Leaning on Jesus all the way,
Who, now and then, lets fall a ray
Of comfort from his throne.
The shinings of his grace
Soften my passage through the wilderness,
And vines, nectareous, spring where briers grew;
The sweet unveilings of his face
Make me, at times, near half as blest as you.
O, might his beauty feast my ravished eyes,
His gladdening presence ever stay,
And cheer me all my journey through!
But soon the clouds return; my triumph dies;
Damp vapours from the valley rise,
And hide the hill of Sion from my view.’

Toplady’s friend, Walter Row, who edited and published his collected Works, together with a ‘Memoir’, did so with many mistakes. He ascribed many of Charles Wesley’s hymns to Toplady and did not improve things by publishing another volume which contained more hymns ascribed to Toplady among which were hymns by Hart, Watts, Beddome and others. In view of this the compilers of the Wesleyan Selection of 1780 might be forgiven for attributing ‘Rock of Ages’ to Wesley! All this gave rise to much confusion and not a little annoyance. As late as 1868 we find J. C. Ryle giving Toplady the credit for Wesley’s ‘Christ whose glory fills the sky’. Even as late as 1950 Gospel Hymns still obstinately or inadvertently, as the case may be, gave Toplady as the author of Wesley’s ‘Thou Shepherd of Israel divine’. It has all been rather confusing, so that one is tempted to think that what united the Calvinists and Arminians of the eighteenth century was perhaps more important than what divided them, if the difficulty of discovering who wrote what is anything to go by! This provocative remark brings me to consider:

Toplady the Controversialist

Some argue that we ought to draw a veil over this aspect of Toplady’s life, and many writers have done this on the grounds that it is best forgotten. I believe this is wrong for two reasons. First, it gives the impression that controversy itself is unchristian and many people hold this view. They forget that the greatest controversialist of the New Testament was our Lord himself. In addition, the Scriptures exhort believers to contend for the faith. Controversy as such is not sinful therefore, although the way in which it is conducted frequently is. Secondly, since Toplady’s behaviour in controversy was far from what it ought to have been, if we ignore this we shall end up with a totally distorted view of the man. The Bible makes no attempt to conceal the blemishes of its “heroes”. We have much to learn from their failures as well as their virtues. The saints, however holy, are still saintly sinners; and such was Augustus Toplady. He illustrates more than most, that however holy a man may become, he still needs to be reminded of the potential of his sinful heart and of the wiles of his spiritual adversary.

Toplady’s ardent temperament, incisive mind and native wit equipped him with great natural ability for the work of controversy. Early in 1769 six young men were expelled from Oxford University on the pretext of their having taken part in a prayer meeting though the real reason was their Calvinistic convictions. Toplady championed the cause, and published a treatise entitled, ‘The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism‘. Here was a country vicar who did more than twiddle his thumbs! From his Dublin student days he had been aware of the considerable opposition within the Church of England to the predestinarian doctrine of its seventeenth Article. Before he was twenty he had translated from the Latin the valuable work of Jerome Zanchius on The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination. The time now seemed ripe for its publication and so Toplady published it at the end of 1769 with an introduction of his own. But what was really intended to counteract the Pelagianism of a worldly church, ended up shattering the spiritual unity of evangelicals.

The publication of this book marked the beginning of what became a very bitter controversy between Calvinistic and Arminian believers. It brought nothing but disgrace to the cause of the Gospel. John Wesley, obviously too busy preaching the Gospel to give adequate time to a serious reply, foolishly issued a sarcastic tract in which he parodied Toplady’s position. Toplady ‘exploded’ and with characteristic impulsiveness replied in the same month with ‘A letter to the Rev. John Wesley’. As Thomas Wright comments,

“Toplady’s blood was up, and the bitterness of his attack has scarcely a parallel in religious history. He piled contempt upon contempt, invective upon invective; he dragged to light all Wesley’s weaknesses. Thus began the portentous fight-a fight without quarter. ..”

Leaders among men need to remember that their followers are usually less restrained than they. Such was the case in this controversy. Walter Sellon and Thomas Olivers who sprang to Wesley’s defence answered Toplady in a Topladian fashion. Toplady hardly seemed to consider the effect of his vitriol or to calculate that all the good he was seeking to achieve in defence of Calvinistic doctrine would be undermined by the way he endeavoured to do it. Even on the basic human consideration that he was a young man and Wesley was almost forty years senior to him, the language used by Toplady was inexcusable. Wesley cuttingly asked,

“Cannot a man hold distinguishing grace, as it is called, but he must distinguish himself for passion, sourness, bitterness?”

The controversy raged furiously for the next five years with charges and countercharges of doubtful integrity being made.

In the course of the conflict Toplady published his Historical Proof of the doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England, (1774), in two volumes. Bishop J. C. Ryle claimed that this work, which was marked by great erudition and a masterly presentation of the material, proved irrefutably that Calvinism is the doctrine of the Church of England, ‘that all her leading divines, until Laud’s time, were Calvinists’. We are not convinced, because we judge that what has happened since Laud’s time is more significant than what happened before. Of this, Toplady had little to say!

The controversy, which was dragged on by men like Rowland Hill exchanging pamphlets with Fletcher, Wesley and Olivers, created a permanent division between evangelicals and left a legacy of terrible bitterness. Toplady emerges as something of a paradox. What are we to say of this godly man who showed himself capable of such terrible malignity? We cannot but recollect the epistle of James when we read passages from Toplady in which words of much grace and sweetness are mingled with invective flowing ‘like hissing lava‘. His utterance at Orange Street Chapel on 14th June, 1778, when he had risen from his deathbed and struggled into the pulpit to refute rumours that he had renounced all his former views was a notable illustration of this. What he said then was a mixture of sweet and sour which the congregation appeared to relish. We cannot blame them. One, who was present as a young man, recollecting the event 57 years later, wrote:

“He was full of faith and the Holy Ghost, and seemed, by the feelings he evinced, to be in the very suburbs of heaven, into which, in a few weeks he entered”.

We do not question that. On another occasion, having reviled Wesley and his followers, Toplady adds,

“But let it not be supposed that I bear them the least degree of personal hatred. God forbid! I have not so learned Christ. The very men who have my opposition have my prayers also. I dare address the great Shepherd, and say:

‘Hast thou a lamb in all thy flock
I would disdain to feed?’
But I likewise wish to add:
‘Hast thou a foe, before whose face
I fear thy cause to plead?”’

He takes away with the hand of malice what he appears to give with the hand of charity. But his speech conveyed a bitterness which, I am quite convinced, was frequently absent from his heart. The unrestrained intemperance of his language was a false gauge of his real feelings, as his personal encounters with Arminians indicated.

J. C. Ryle tries to soften his criticism of Toplady’s behaviour by saying,

“Arminianism seems to have precisely the same effect on him that a scarlet cloak has on a bull”.

That was true, but violent language was also directed against the Papists whom he could never forgive for the time “when God’s people were burnt in such numbers that it raised the price of wood”.

How are we to explain the contradiction between his intense love of Christ and these fearful expressions of hatred which fell from his lips? It is worth noting that other great saints, such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Samuel Rutherford, have been guilty of exactly the same thing. Any believer thinking that he is immune from such contradictions has surely forgotten the doctrine of indwelling sin, and the conflict which exists within the regenerate soul between the flesh and the Spirit. Our shortcomings may not be those of Toplady, but there will be other anomalies. I do not find Toplady difficult to understand. The very intensity of his devotion to Jesus Christ provides the key to an understanding of the violence of his opposition to the Arminians. The common factor is great intensity of feeling and strength of expression. This natural trait of temperament when directed by the Spirit towards Christ is beautiful in expression, but under the control of ‘the flesh’ it is ugly to behold. Toplady allowed Satan to exploit the weakness of his temperament. His quick and imaginative wit, so effective in his preaching, becomes a snare when he
yields to the temptation of describing Walter Sellon as ‘Wesley’s pack-horse’ and ‘a pygmy on stilts’, and sneeringly alludes to Thomas Olivers as ‘cobbler Tom’. His ability to turn the phrase gave him the opportunity of scoring cheap points which he used to cruel advantage. Like so many of us, his strength became the occasion of his weakness. He was a man who never seemed to come to terms with his natural impetuosity nor did he appear to resist the devil where a temperamental trait threatened to become a besetting sin. Instead of mortifying the flesh to prevent the powerful traits of his personality becoming occasions of sin, he seemed to think that the rightness of his doctrinal position gave him warrant for abusing his opponents. Had he remembered the manner in which he himself had been gently delivered from his own early and vehement Arminianism, through the graciousness of a kindly Christian gentleman, he might well have shown more patience and acted differently. His impulsive temperament frequently prompted him to act without reflecting on what the consequences of those actions might be.

This raises the question of whether he and his followers were right to divide evangelicals over the Calvinistic/Arminian issue. In view of certain statements being made today it is worth noting that even Toplady distinguished between the essentials and non-essentials of truth. I say ‘even Toplady’, because no one could question his zeal for the faith or accuse him of being willing to sacrifice any conviction which he thought biblical. And yet he did not allow his views on baptism to inhibit his fellowship at the Lord’s Table with brethren of a different persuasion. Even though he was a convinced Anglican he was not willing to divide the church over issues of church government.

Some evangelicals today are referring to all truth as ‘mandatory’, denying that any distinction can be made between essentials and non-essentials. We must ask, mandatory for what? For salvation? Even Toplady on the one issue over which he was prepared to divide evangelicals did not hold the view that Calvinism was mandatory for salvation. To suggest that no distinction can be made between truth essential to salvation and that which is not essential is to speak as the cults do. To imply that the ‘distinctives’ held by certain evangelical groups cannot be distinguished from those apostolic doctrines, without which the Gospel would cease to be the Gospel and the Church would cease to be the Church, is the beginning of the road to that exclusivism which has created such havoc in the Brethren movement.

What are the distinctives which distinguish one group of evangelicals from another? For most of us they are the traditions we have inherited by reason of birth; the cradles in which we have been rocked from the day we were born. Our distinctives, whether it be our mode of baptism or our church order, are not the really important things about us. They have come to us by nature. The really important things about us have come by grace; such as the new birth, justification by faith and our reverence of the Scriptures as the very Word of God. These are the distinctives of grace common to true evangelicals. They distinguish us from the world and should be a sufficient basis for evangelical co-operation and unity.

To seek to establish institutions and perpetuate old divisions by elevating non-essentials is to be guilty of grievous sin. To divide the Church over one’s inherited ‘distinctives’ is to make those distinctives exclusives. Such exclusivism begets the terrible sin of schism and betrays the fear that one’s position is not strong enough to survive in fellowship with others who are at one with us on the centralities of the faith. All this was far from Toplady’s spirit. He found much fellowship in the company of Dissenters who differed from him on many points of doctrine and yet were united with him in his Calvinism. He once said,

“Would to God that the nasty party walls, which separate the Lord’s people from each other below, were everyone of them thrown down.”

The real question to be faced in connection with Toplady is whether he was right in dividing evangelicalism over the issue of Calvinism, when he was quite happy to remain within the Church of England ‘in fellowship’ with many strongly opposed to the evangelical message common to both Calvinistic and Arminian evangelicals. I venture to suggest he was wrong; not, of course, in his doctrinal position, or in his desire to debate the issues raised by Arminianism, but in his failure to see that a more vital issue was at stake. This was the supernaturalism of the Christian faith as expressed in the doctrine of the new birth upon which both Calvinists and Arminians were united. This, and not the Calvinistic/Arminian issue, I dare to suggest, should have been made the touchstone of Christian fellowship; and applied to the doctrine of the spiritual character of Christ’s Church.

Toplady the Saint

There seems to have been given to Toplady an extraordinary clarity of understanding as to the nature of divine grace and of man’s total dependence upon it for all things. It is one of the main features of his hymns. Some, ‘not knowing the Scriptures’, would attribute it to his Calvinistic doctrine. It was, however, the result of spiritual illumination and an unusual depth of spiritual experience. His doctrine was the biblical expression of that experience. The strength and force of Toplady’s Calvinistic position lay in a remarkable communion with God and in a frequent experience of divine visitations. The Reformed world of our day seems a totally different place from that of Toplady’s time. Toplady and his friends accepted without question that ecstatic experiences and direct communications of God with the soul should be an expected part of the Christian life. It is ironical that in Reformed circles today there seems little place for the extraordinary.We seem to be faced with what one might call a Calvinistic naturalism, eager to eliminate the supematural from the Christian’s experience. This so called ‘Calvinism’ is less Christian in character than the Arminianism of the eighteenth century which gave a supreme place, despite its doctrinal inconsistencies, to the direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the soul.

Toplady once prayed, ‘God keep me from being a mere scholar’; and He did. Our clearest insight into the real man is found in a personal Diary which Toplady kept for a period of twelve months from 6th December, 1767. Here we discover that the doctrines of grace he so strongly held were an expression of his rich spiritual experience – or, if you like, a Calvinism of the heart. Writing of predestination, he exclaims,

“How sweet is that blessed and glorious doctrine to the soul, when it is received through the channel of inward experience” (13th December 1767).

And we can add, surely, how and it can become when it is not so received. Denying that the doctrines of grace are dry doctrines, or mere points of philosophical speculation, he once warmly expressed himself to a friend with these words,

“No. But, being brought into practical and heartfelt experience, they are the very joy and support of my soul; and the consolations, flowing from them, convey me far above the things of time and sense.”

He believed that a man can only really have a true perception of the sovereignty of God by revelation of the Spirit. Referring to a believer of Arminian persuasion, whom he had visited when ill, he prays,

“Lord, let not thy Spirit leave him, until thou hast made him cry, from the depth of his heart, ‘O, sovereign grace! I am nothing! Thou art all!”’ (5th April,1768).

His own grasp of the nature of grace was linked with a spiritual knowledge of the sinfulness of his own heart, as the following entry illustrates.

‘My shortcomings and my misdoings, my unbelief and want of love, would sink me into the nethermost hell, were not Jesus my righteousness and my redemption. There is no sin which I should not commit, were not Jesus, by the power of his Spirit my sanctification.’ (30th December 1767).

How few believers have that degree of self-knowledge! We observe again, in another entry, how his rich view of God’s grace is coupled with a deep sense of his own unworthiness.

‘God is very gracious to my soul. My meditation of him was sweet, and he gave me songs in the night season. I had sweet, melting views of his special goodness, and of my own utter unworthiness. The united sense of these two keeps the soul in an even balance. I am then happiest, as well as safest, when my very exaltations lay me lowest.’ (29th August 1768).

This was the experimental manner in which Toplady desired men to embrace the doctrines of grace. He was highly critical of an orthodoxy lacking in spiritual warmth. Only as a man continued in an experimental knowledge of the truth could he be preserved from apostasy. Thanking God for his own understanding of the faith, he comments,

‘Lord, how is it that I have been so signally favoured of thee! O keep me to the end steadfast in thy truths. Let me go on experimentally and sensibly to know thee; and then it will be absolutely impossible for me to depart from the precious doctrines of grace’ (27th December 1767).

It seems to have become a matter of orthodoxy in Calvinistic circles today that God only speaks to men by means of the Word of God. Any suggestion that God might deal with our souls by direct visitations is being vigorously denied. This attitude may be partly a reaction to the modern Charismatic Movement; but however we explain its origins, its roots are not found in the Calvinism of the great evangelicals of the eighteenth century. Toplady makes constant reference to occasions of divine visitation and of God speaking directly to his soul. One such occasion was the evening of 29th December, 1767.

“At night before I betook myself to rest, I was enabled to act faith very strongly on the promises. It was as if I had held conversation with God. He assured me of his faithfulness, and I trusted him. It was whispered to my soul, ‘Thou shalt find me faithful’; and my soul answered, ‘Lord, I believe it: I take thee at thy word’. This, I am certain was more than fancy. It was too sweet, too clear, and too powerful, to be the daughter of imagination. There was a nescio quid divini (i.e. something divine), attended with joy unspeakable, as much superior to all the sensations excited by earthly comforts, as the heavens are higher than the earth. Besides, in my experience of this kind,when under the immediate light of God’s presence within, my soul is, in great measure, passive; and lies open to the beams of the sun of righteousness. These acts of faith, love and spiritual aspiration, are subsequent to, and occasioned by, this unutterable reception of divine influence. I bless my God, I know his inward voice; the still, small whisper of his good Spirit; and can distinguish it from every other suggestion whatever. Lord, evermore give me this bread to eat, which the world knoweth not of!”

He refers to another such experience in his Diary entry for 2nd March,1768, and records:

“In secret prayer, this morning, before I left my chamber, the fire of divine love kindled, and the Lord sensibly shone upon my soul. I could not forbear saying, ‘O, why art thou so kind to the chief of sinners?’ I was so taken up, and as it were circumfused, with the love of God, and the perception of my union with him, that I could hardly ask for pardon. Thus I walked in the light of his countenance, for, I suppose, two or three minutes: when alas! evil wanderings intervened, my warmth of joy suddenly subsided, and I was in great measure, brought down from the mount. Yet the sweetness and peace of this heavenly visit remained after the blessed visitant was withdrawn. Though the sun himself retired from view, yet (if I may so express it) I enjoyed the refraction of his beams. He did not disappear without leaving a blessing behind him; sufficient, I trust, for faith to live upon until I see him again.”

Today, we seem to think that faith should live only on the bare word of Scripture. It is no wonder that the flame burns so low.

Toplady envisaged communion with God as a drawing near of the divine Lover to our souls, in such a manner that our hearts are drawn out in love for him. He entitled his Diary, ‘Short Memorials of God’s gracious Dealings with my Soul, in a Way of Spiritual Experience’. How few believers today could even begin to write such a record. We seem to be in the sad position of knowing the presence of God only as an inference which we draw from the promises of Scripture, and have little experience of a felt presence. What we have overlooked in our spiritual poverty is that, although the Lord has promised to be present with His people, there are times when He manifests His presence and times when He does not. This is the divine activity which enabled Toplady to speak of the presence and absence of the Lord. We know so little of divine manifestations that the Lord can be absent from us and yet we know it not. How terrible is our state! But Toplady had known so many sensible and gracious manifestations of the Lord, lifting up the light of His countenance upon him, that he was acutely sensitive of those times when the Lord veiled his face.

“I often experience,” he wrote, “the peace that passeth all understanding, and the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. Not that I am always on the mount. There are seasons, in which my Lord is ‘as one that hideth himself'” (27th December 1767).

A week earlier he had expressed it in this manner,

“O the difference, the inexpressible difference, between enjoying God’s presence, and pining in its absence! This day, my soul has been like a chariot without wheels; and, afterwards, mounted as on eagles’ wings. Blessed be God, for tempering distress with joy! Too much of the former might weigh me quite down; too much of the latter might exalt me above measure. It is wisely and kindly done, O God, to give me a taste of both.” (20th December 1767).

The very great assurance which Toplady enjoyed and the divine comforts which so greatly strengthened him in his frail health were clearly due to these ecstatic experiences of communion with God and the frequency with which the love of God was poured out in his soul by the Spirit. The following entry in his Diary illustrates this:

‘At night in my chamber, God was with me in my private waiting upon him; and I could indeed say, from a heartfelt sense of his love, that it is good for me to draw nigh unto the Lord. Thy visitation, sweet Jesus, is the life and joy of my spirit.’ (25th December 1767).

On the same day he speaks of

‘sensible effusions of divine love in the soul’ – a love to which the human senses can bear witness. Once having known such experience the absence of it is keenly felt, so that the soul longs for the Day Star to arise.’

He writes of a time when

‘… the shadows fled away. Light sprang up, and the fire kindled; even the light of God’s countenance, and the fire of his love.Yet my comforts did not amount to the full triumph and ecstatic bliss I have sometimes experienced; but were gentle, peaceful, and serene; attended with a mild, refreshing, lenient warmth; which melted me into conscious nothingness before God and made me feel him and rest upon him as my all in all.’ (20th March, 1768).

And on the following Lord’s Day he is able to testify that,

‘Between eight and nine this morning, the Lord visited my soul with a lively sense of his salvation. My comfort, joy and triumph were unutterable for some minutes; and the savour of his precious ointment, thus divinely shed abroad in my heart, abode with me, more or less, through the course of the whole day.’ (27th March, 1768).

Many more such references are found in this godly man’s Diary. Not only was Toplady able to describe his spiritual comforts and joys ‘flowing like a river’, but also as rising ‘like the waves of the sea’. But I cannot read the whole Diary to you, as much as I would like to. The Evangelical Library exists so that you can read it for yourself. But before I leave this subject, I must quote a passage in which Toplady defends such experiences against the charge of enthusiasm. It is as though he anticipates the arguments which certain critics might be tempted to advance on the two hundreth anniversary of his death. Writing on 15th April, 1768 he expresses himself as follows:

“Several words of comfort were, this day, at different times, spoken to and sealed upon my heart: particularly those three, ‘Fear not; I will be with thee’, -‘Trust me’ ‘I will uphold thee with the right-hand of my righteousness’. At another time these were powerfully suggested to my soul, ‘Be joyful in the Lord’. To many all this would appear as the most palpable enthusiasm; and there was a time, when I myself should have thought so too. But blessed be God the comforter, I know what it is to enjoy some degree of communion with the Father, and the Son by him. And, exclusively of this inward proof, test or “evidence” (as in A.V. of Hebrews 11:1), which is, to myself, equivalent, in point of mental satisfaction, to ten thousand demonstrations; my experiences of this kind, considered even in the most rational view, cannot, I am well persuaded, be justly counted enthusiastic, or the of spring of a heated imagination; for,

(1) They are attended with such a powerful sweetness, and such commanding weight, such satisfactory clearness, and such perfect consistency with the promises of Scripture, as leave me no cause to doubt of its being indeed the voice of God to my soul.

(2) My mind, on these occasions, is as absolutely passive as my body can be at any time hearing any person speak with whom I converse.

(3) I argue from events, I can, to the best of my remembrance and belief, truly say, that I never yet have had one promise, nor assurance, conceming temporal things, impressed on me beforehand in a way of communion with God, which the event did not realize; I never, that I know of, knew it fail in any one single instance. I do not say, that a particular assurance, concerning any particular futurity, is always given me beforehand; far from it: but when it has, two unisons never harmonized more exactly than my assurance and the subsequent providence. And, if this has, hitherto, been the case with me in temporal concerns, and matters of Providence; why should similar indulgences from above, respecting spiritual things, and matters of grace, be treated as fanciful?” (15th April, 1768).

Toplady’s Death

I am glad this is the bi-centenary of Toplady’s death and not his birth. His death was glorious! Some of his most moving utterances fell from his lips in the closing weeks of his life, as his long illness drew to its close, and he knew he was soon to die. The last three months of his life, during which he was confined to his rooms in Knightsbridge, were a period of almost continuous joy and uninterrupted communion with Christ. He would frequently exclaim,

“O what a day of sunshine this has been to me! I have not words to express it. It is unutterable. O my friends, how good is God! Almost without interruption his presence has been with me.”

And of Christ, he declared, ‘His love is unutterable.’

As death approached his spiritual consolations appeared to increase. A friend discovered him glorying in Christ’s righteousness, and testified,

“He was so affected with a sense of God’s everlasting love to his soul that he could not refrain from bursting into tears…he evidently possessed the fullest assurance of the most triumphant faith… His soul seemed to be constantly panting heavenward.”

A few days before his death, the same friend, finding him sitting in a chair hardly able to speak asked him whether his consolations continued to abound, to which he replied,

“O, my dear Sir, it is impossible to describe how good God is to me. Since I have been sitting in this chair this afternoon (glory be to His Name!) I have enjoyed such a season, such sweet communion with God, and such delightful manifestations of his presence with, and love to my soul, that it is impossible for words, or any language, to express them. I have had peace and joy unutterable: and I fear not but that God’s consolations and support will continue.”

Sensing that perhaps he was presuming too much, he added,

“What have I said? God may, to be sure, as a Sovereign, hide his face and his smiles from me; however, I believe he will not; and if he should, yet still will I trust in him; I know I am safe and secure; for his love and covenant is everlasting.”

Another friend, calling a day or two before his death, found him with hands clasped, eyes uplifted and staring with tears of most evident joy as he exclaimed,

“O my dear Sir, I cannot tell you the comforts I feel in my soul; they are past expression. The consolations of God to such an unworthy wretch are so abundant, that he leaves me nothing to pray for, but a continuance of them. I enjoy a heaven already in my soul. My prayers are all converted into praise.”

As he drew near to the end, he awoke out of a sleep, and exclaimed, “O what delights! Who can fathom the joys of the third heaven?”

Just before his departure to be with Christ, he was blessing and praising God for granting to him a continued clarity of mind, ‘but’, added he, in a rapture of delight, ‘for what is most of all, his abiding presence and the shining of his love upon my soul. The sky is clear; there is no cloud; come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!’

An hour before his death, he announced to his gathered friends and servant,

“It will not be long before God takes me; for no mortal man can live” (and while he said this he wept with tears of joy) “after the glories which God has manifested to my soul. Who would not die a thousand deaths, were this the death to die!”

‘Kind Author, and ground, of my hope,

Thee, thee for my God I avow;

My glad Ebenezer set up,

And own thou hast helped me till now.

I muse on the years that are past,

Wherein my defence thou hast proved;

Nor wilt thou abandon at last

A sinner so signally loved.’

Such was Augustus Toplady, the saintly sinner, who died on 11th August, 1778, at the age of 37 years, and was buried in Tottenham Court Road Chapel. He had a London pulpit from which he had been preaching to great crowds. With health there seemed the prospect of a mighty work ahead of him. It is difficult to understand why the Lord removed him. There is a mystery in God’s providence which only those with great faith are able to accept cheerfully. Of such faith Toplady had an abundance.

I cannot do better in concluding than to quote again from the brief Memoir published in the year of his death from which I have already been quoting extensively. To a friend, who once expressed concern for his precarious health, he wrote;

‘God give us to sink deeper and deeper into his love, and to rise higher and higher into the image of his holiness! And thoroughly persuaded I am, that, the more we are enabled to love and resemble him, the more active we shall be, to promote his glory, and to extend his cause, with our lips, our pens, our lives, our all. Be this our business, and our bliss, on earth. In heaven, we shall have nothing to do, but to see Him as He is, to participate in his glory, and to sing his praise, in delightful, in never-ending concert with angels, with saints who are gone home before us, and with those of the elect, whom we knew and loved below.’

Recommended Bibliography
1) The Works of Augustus Toplady (first published in 1794; and available in six volumes, or one volume) containing the Memoir by Walter Row, the editor.
2) A Memoir of some principal circumstances in the Life and Death of the Rev. Augustus Montague Toplady by James Matthews, 1778, bound in a book of Funeral Sermons in Dr.William’s Library.
3) Gospel Magazine for years 1899 and 1907.
4) The Life of Augustus Toplady by Thomas Wright, 1911.
5) Memoirs of Hymn Writers and Compilers by John Gadsby, 1882.
6) The Christian Leaders of the Last Century by J. C. Ryle, 1891 edition.
7) History of Orange Street Chapel by Richard W.Free, 1888.
8) Hymns and Sacred Poems by Augustus Toplady, D. Sedgwick’s reprint, 1860.
9) Diary and Selection of Hymns of Augustus Toplady, 1969.

These books are obtainable through the Evangelical Library.