An Explication of that Remarkable Passage (Romans 9:3) - Augustus M. Toplady #shorts #calvinism
An Explication of that Remarkable Passage (Romans 9:3) - Augustus M. Toplady #shorts #calvinism
Augustus M. Toplady (1740 - 1778)
Anglican cleric and hymn writer. He was a major Calvinist opponent of John Wesley. He is best remembered as the author of the hymn "Rock of Ages". Three of his other hymns — "A Debtor to Mercy Alone", "Deathless Principle, Arise" and "Object of My First Desire" — are still occasionally sung today, though all three are far less popular than "Rock of Ages".
Show More
Trinity College, Dublin: 1755–60
In 1755, Catherine and Augustus moved to Ireland, and Augustus was enrolled in Trinity College Dublin.
Following his graduation from Trinity College in 1760, Toplady and his mother returned to Westminster. There, Toplady met and was influenced by several prominent Calvinist ministers, including George Whitefield, John Gill, and William Romaine. It was John Gill who in 1760 urged Toplady to publish his translation of Zanchius's work on predestination, Toplady commenting that "I was not then, however, sufficiently delivered from the fear of man."
Church ministry: 1762–78
In 1762, Edward Willes, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, ordained Toplady as an Anglican deacon, appointing him curate of Blagdon, located in the Mendip Hills of Somerset.
Toplady wrote his famous hymn Rock of Ages in 1763.
Calvinist controversialist: 1769–78
Toplady's first salvo into the world of religious controversy came in 1769 when he wrote a book in response to a situation at the University of Oxford. Six students had been expelled from St Edmund Hall because of their Calvinist views, which Thomas Nowell criticised as inconsistent with the views of the Church of England. Toplady then criticised Nowell's position in his book The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism, which argued that Calvinism, not Arminianism, was the position historically held by the Church of England.
1769 also saw Toplady publish his translation of Zanchius's Confession of the Christian
