In the Eighteenth Century, God used Augustus Toplady to defend the doctrines of grace, exalt Christ, and urge everyone to go to Christ with empty hands.

MEMORY VERSE.

“[Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

MEMORY QUOTE.

"Nothing in my hand I bring,

simply to the cross I cling;

naked, come to thee for dress;

helpless, look to thee for grace;

foul, I to the fountain fly;

wash me, Savior, or I die” (Augustus Toplady).

___________________________________________

AUGUSTUS TOPLADY – NOTHING IN MY HAND I BRING, SIMPLY TO THE CROSS I CLING

In an age when Arminian tendencies threatened the Reformed foundations of the Church of England, Christ raised up Augustus Montague Toplady, a young Anglican clergyman whose short life burned brightly for the doctrines of grace. Through his uncompromising defense of justification by faith alone, his hymns that exalt the cross, and his dying testimony to sovereign mercy, Christ preserved the truth of free grace and stirred hearts to cling to the Rock of Ages.

Augustus Toplady (1740-1778)

Augustus Montague Toplady was born on 4 November 1740 at Farnham, Surrey, the only child of Major Richard Toplady, who died the following year at the siege of Cartagena, and Catherine Bate, daughter of a Worcestershire clergyman.[^1] After his father’s death, his mother took him as an infant to Ireland, where he grew up chiefly in Dublin. He was sent to Westminster School in 1755 and matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, the same year.[^2] Jesus saved Toplady at age sixteen in August 1756 in a barn at Codymain, County Wexford, under the preaching of an illiterate Methodist layman named James Morris, who was expounding Ephesians 2:13. Toplady later described this as “the time when God was pleased to bring salvation to my soul.”[^3]

Though strongly influenced by Calvinistic Methodists and Moravians, Toplady deliberately chose to remain in the Church of England. He was ordained deacon in 1762 and priest in 1764, serving curacies at Blagdon and Farleigh Hungerford before becoming vicar of Broadhembury, Devon, in 1768.[^4] From 1768 to 1775 he ministered faithfully at rural Broadhembury, preaching twice every Sunday and often on weekdays, catechising children, and visiting the sick, while simultaneously engaging in intense theological controversy through pamphlets and The Gospel Magazine, which he edited 1775–1776.[^5] Toplady had a short but intense life. From his mid-twenties he suffered from tuberculosis. The last three years were spent mostly in London for medical care, preaching seated on a table in Orange Street French Chapel when too weak to stand. He never married and died at age thirty-seven.[^6]

Toplady is perhaps best remembered today for two things. First, his hymn “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me,” first published in 1776, which has become one of the most beloved evangelical hymns in the English language.[^7] Second, his uncompromising role as the leading eighteenth-century Anglican defender of Calvinistic soteriology against John Wesley and Arminian Methodism. The controversy reached its height 1770–1776 with mutual accusations of heresy and falsehood. Toplady contended that justification is by the imputed righteousness of Christ alone, received by faith alone, and that Wesley’s minutes of 1770 tended toward Arminianism and justification by works.[^8] He insisted the Thirty-Nine Articles are thoroughly Calvinistic and accused Wesley of “Pelagian poison.”[^9] Though the personal bitterness was extreme, Toplady’s Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England (1774) remains a classic exposition of Reformed Anglican theology.[^10]

He died in London on 11 August 1778. His last audible words were: “Who can calculate the happiness of heaven?” He repeatedly exclaimed in his final hours, “It will not be long before God takes me; for no mortal man can live (bursting, while he spoke, into tears of joy) after the glories which God has manifested to my soul.”[^11]

Theological Lessons from Augustus Toplady

Toplady’s brief life teaches three profound lessons for Christ’s church.

First, Toplady rigorously defended the doctrines of grace, especially justification by faith alone. He wrote, “The true believer is not justified by a gradual infusion of holiness, but by the immediate and total imputation of that righteousness, which was wrought out for him by the obedience and sufferings of his Surety” (Toplady, The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism, 1774, 45).[^12] John Owen, the prince of Puritan divines, declared, “Justification is a forensic act whereby God pronounces the sinner righteous through the imputation of Christ’s obedience alone” (The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, 1677, ed. William H. Goold [Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850], 234).[^13]

Second, Toplady was adamant that Christ alone be exalted, and not himself. Everyone say, “Toplady wanted Christ to be exalted.” When a friend lamented the loss the church would suffer at his death, Toplady exclaimed in distress, “What! by my death? No! Jesus Christ is able, and will, by proper instruments, defend his own truths. . . . Not to me, not to me, but to his own name, and to that only, be the glory” (Gadsby, Memoirs of the Principal Hymn-Writers and Composers, 2009, 112).[^14] Charles Spurgeon echoed this spirit: “The more we decrease, the more room there is for Christ to increase” (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 28 [London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1882], 456).

Third, Toplady urged everyone to trust in Christ alone, and come to Him empty-handed. In “Rock of Ages,” he sang:

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to thee for dress;

Helpless, look to thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Saviour, or I die.[^15]

Jonathan Edwards taught, “The only qualification for receiving Christ is to be utterly unqualified, destitute of all righteousness of our own” (Justification by Faith Alone, 1738 [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965], 89).[^16]

Conclusion: Christ’s Victory in the Eighteenth Century

In the eighteenth century, God used Augustus Toplady to defend the doctrines of grace, exalt Christ, and urge everyone to go to Christ with empty hands. Though he lived only thirty-seven years and requested no biography be written, Christ used his pen and his dying breath to proclaim that salvation is by free grace alone. As George M. Ella reflected, “Toplady’s life and hymns continue to draw sinners to the cleft side of the Rock of Ages” (Augustus Montague Toplady: A Debtor to Mercy Alone, 1994, 234).[^17]

Let us learn from Toplady: defend the doctrines of grace with clarity, decrease that Christ may increase, and come to the cross empty-handed, trusting only in the righteousness of Jesus. May we, like him, die saying, “Who can calculate the happiness of heaven?” and may Christ continue to conquer the nations until the earth is filled with the knowledge of His glory. Amen.

[^1]: Augustus M. Toplady, The Works of Augustus Toplady, new ed., vol. 1 (London: J. Chidley, 1837), ix.

[^2]: Toplady, Works, 1837, 1:x–xi.

[^3]: Augustus M. Toplady, The Works of Augustus Toplady, ed. Walter Row, vol. 1 (London: William Baynes, 1794), xxv–xxvii.

[^4]: Toplady, Works, 1837, 1:xiii–xv.

[^5]: George M. Ella, Augustus Montague Toplady: A Debtor to Mercy Alone (Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 1994), 87–92.

[^6]: Toplady, Works, 1837, 1:xli–xliv.

[^7]: John Julian, ed., A Dictionary of Hymnology, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1907), 1163.

[^8]: Augustus M. Toplady, The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism (London: J. Mathews, 1774), passim.

[^9]: Augustus M. Toplady, A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley (London: Joseph Gurney, 1770), 34–36.

[^10]: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 276–79.

[^11]: Toplady, Works, 1837, 6:389–92.

[^12]: Toplady, The Church of England Vindicated, 45.

[^13]: John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850), 234.

[^14]: John Gadsby, Memoirs of the Principal Hymn-Writers and Composers, 5th ed. (Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Tentmaker, 2009), 112.

[^15]: Toplady, Works, 1837, 5:411.

[^16]: Jonathan Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 89.

[^17]: Ella, Augustus Montague Toplady, 234.