Toplady, Augustus Montague

(1740-1778)

   Born at Farnham, Surrey, the son of an Army major who died at the siege of Carthagena (1741), he was educated at Westminster School and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1760. Around 1756 he was converted under the ministry of a follower of John Wesley, changed to extreme Calvinism, was ordained in 1764, and from 1768 until 1775 was curate of Broad Hembury, Devon. For a short time in 1776, he edited the Calvinist Gospel Magazine, founded 1766. He used the magazine to hound Wesley over their differing views of the doctrine of election, and the ensuing war of words brought discredit to the Christian church. In 1775, suffering from tuberculosis, Toplady moved to London to minister in the French Calvinist reformed church on Orange Street, near the Embankment. He died, avowing that he would not retract anything he said about Wesley, and was buried in Tottenham Court Chapel. He was a poet and hymn-writer and his best-known hymn is "Rock of Ages." Some of his other hymns/poems: "Ah! Give Me, Lord, the Single Eye," "Deathless Principle, Arise," "Grace, 'Tis a Charming Sound," "Happiness Found," "The Year of Jubilee."

   Sources: A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. James H. Trott, ed. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. A Treasury of Poems for Worship and Devotion. Charles L. Wallis, ed. Harper, 1959. Augustus Montague Toplady (http://www.btinternet.com/Toplady, Augustus Montaguealan.s.flint/toplady/),. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Freedom's Lyre: or Psalms, Hymns, and Sacred Songs, for the Slave and His Friends. Edwin F. Hatfield, ed. S.W. Benedict, 1840. The National Portrait Gallery. (www.npg.org.uk). The Best Loved Religious Poems. James Gilchrist Lawson, ed. Fleming H. Revell, 1933. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Cyber Hymnal (http://www.cyberhymnal.org/index.htm). The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Lord David Cecil, ed. Oxford University Press, 1940. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).