Augustus Montague Toplady, (1740–78), hymn-writer, born at Farnham, and educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Dublin, in 1768 became vicar of Broad Hembury, Devon, and in 1775 preacher in a chapel near Leicester Fields, London. A strenuous defender of Calvinism, he was a bitter controversialist. His “Church of England vindicated from Arminianism” (1774) is forgotten; but no hymn is better known than “Rock of Ages.” In 1759 he published “Poems on Sacred Subjects;” his “Psalms and Hymns” (1776) was a collection with but few of his own.

Personal

  Mr. Augustus Toplady I know well; but I do not fight with chimney-sweepers. He is too dirty a writer for me to meddle with; I should only foul my fingers…. I leave him to Mr. Sellon. He cannot be in better hands…. Your affectionate brother,

  He died young; and the piety and diligence of his life is somewhat overshadowed by a personal virulence in controversy which more advanced years would probably have tempered. He spoke of what he supposed to be Wesley’s theological errors as if they were so many unpardonable sins, the very thought of which almost drove him into frenzy.

General

  Toplady dwelt much on the importance of Calvinistic principles, which he defended with great energy of language and argument. But he too often indulged in controversy to an asperity of manner, and sometimes a ludicrous representation of his antagonist, altogether inconsistent with the dignity of the subject.

  A strenuous defender of Calvinistic views, but not in the spirit of the gospel. His “Historic Defence” is full of information, and worth reading. It has been examined by the Anglo-American Bishop White in his “Comparative Views of the Controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians,” and the fidelity of his quotations questioned. Some of the “Hymns” are beautiful.

  Toplady was the author of that most precious lyric,

“Rock of Ages! cleft for me!” etc.,—

one of the most popular hymns in the English language, and one that has found its way into nearly all the Collections. It has been adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, in its English original; and, in the admirable Latin version of it by the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, is likely to find a place in the Breviary.

  His fervour of nature, when directed to worthier purpose, inspired Toplady with this splendid Lyric; [“Rock of Ages”] which, in beauty and intensity of feeling, has a rival in [“Compared With Christ, in all beside,”]—a hymn truly sublime through the simplicity of its absolute self-surrender.

  His splendid and expressive hymns, a rich embodiment of religious experience, are his imperishable memorial.

  When the Sunday at Home took the plebiscite of 3,500 of its readers as to which were the best hymns in the language, the “Rock of Ages” stood at the top of the tree, having no fewer than 3,215 votes. Only three other hymns had more than 3,000 votes. They were, “Abide with me,” “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” and “Just as I am.”… Toplady was a sad polemist, whose orthodox soul was outraged by the Arminianism of the Wesleys. He and they indulged in much disputation of the brickbat and Billingsgate order, as was the fashion in those days. Toplady put much of his time and energy in the composition of controversial pamphlets, on which the good man prided himself not a little. The dust lies thick upon these his works, nor is it likely to be disturbed now or in the future. But in a pause in the fray, just by way of filling up an interval in the firing of polemical broadsides, Augustus Montague Toplady thought he saw a way of launching an airy dart at a joint in Wesley’s armour, on the subject of Sanctification. So without much ado, and without any knowledge that it was by this alone he was to render permanent service to mankind, he sent off to the Gospel Magazine of 1776 the hymn “Rock of Ages.”

  Toplady was the author of the fine hymn, “Rock of ages cleft for me,” which was published in the “Gospel Magazine” in Oct. 1775, probably soon after it was written, although a local tradition associates its symbolism with a rocky gorge in the parish of Blagdon, his first curacy. It does not appear in his early volume, “Poems on Sacred Subjects,” 1759. It was translated into Latin by Mr. Gladstone in 1839. Montgomery puts Toplady’s hymns on a level with those of Charles Wesley, but that is too high an estimate. The best, after “Rock of Ages,” is “Deathless Principle, arise,” a soliloquy to the soul of the type of Pope’s “Vital Spark.” Of the contemporary Calvinist writers Toplady was the keenest, raciest, and best equipped philosophically.