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Augustus Montague Toplady: a Debtor to Mercy Alone

Augustus Montague Toplady: a Debtor to Mercy Alone
By George M. Ella
Go Publications. 800 pages. £24.95
ISBN 0 9257 074 5 4

In spite of 'Rock of Ages', Toplady needs friends. In George Ella, established as Cowper's finest interpreter, he has found more than friendship. Here is a champion, heavyweight at that.

'There is no good biography of Toplady', he says, quoting Bishop Ryle approvingly. That may still be the case. This one is compelling, even essential to further studies; but we must brace ourselves for full-scale hero-worship. It was originally planned as two volumes, and shows some repetition in part two. The 'life', with many digressions, closes on page 340 with the words 'Fie! Fie!' Part two, with a separate introduction, is a Gospel Magazine anthology, including sermons, hymns, diaries and letters.

Dr. Ella's excuse for hagiography is that for mainstream historians John Wesley is the hero, Toplady the villain. Wesley long outlived his younger antagonist, with ample opportunity to vilify any who dared to contradict him. In this attempt to put the record straight, readers are pointed to the essential unity of 'the verse they love and the prose they hate'.

Wesley was a self-promoting slanderer of his enemies and former friends. Toplady, sharpest of the former, was first in the Methodist/Arminian firing line. He was often more sinned against than sinning; yet we do not find Wesley licking Lady Bountiful's slippers or refusing to visit a condemned prisoner because of his nerves. Is Arminianism but one step from atheism? Wesley did not tour the country planting communities of unbelievers. Both combatants were more likely to thank God they were not as other men, than to say 'Sorry, I was wrong'.

Those who make Toplady's case must recognise when he lacks courtesy or a sense of proportion, and give chapter and verse for Wesley's crimes. A 'good biography' would discuss how much of Toplady's spite was illness-related; why he contacts Newton or Cowper so rarely; what underlies the Burrington Combe legend. It would feature unflattering incidents and choice insults.

As a new Devon incumbent, Toplady is highly critical of his parishioners. Lawton's 1983 book Within the Rock of Ages, George Ella's frequent target, calls his complaints preposterous. Readers might at least feel that the 27 year-old vicar had still something to learn, since there was truth on both sides. But Ella must list seven infallible reasons why Toplady was right and Lawton wrong.

There are masterly things here. The Genesis 12.5 sermon (with double exposure), the account of Elizabeth Rowe, many lesser-known hymns and devotional works help to explain his vast following. Thousands hung on his spoken words. He battled fiercely against illness. Our sympathies ebb and flow; his 'Natural History' is not humourless, but his eulogy of Whitefield (another repeat) is neither appealing nor informative, and his 11 pages on Isaac Watts ignore the hymns.

I find myself sympathising with the notorious Dr. Dodd, who in the condemned cell received a letter from Toplady rebuking him for wasting his last hours annotating Shakespeare. I can think of worse occupations; he might have been reading Wesley's sermons.

Christopher Idle