A sovereign protector I have

As in Christian Praise (1957) and CH, this hymn immediately follows its Toplady ‘twin’; see the notes to 773. But while it is equally a theological heavyweight, found in a similar number and type of current books, it rises to greater heights of poetry than the previous item and has a quite different origin. As the author quotes it in his diary at the beginning of 1768 he probably wrote it in the previous year, at Fen Ottery near Exeter. It appeared in The Gospel Magazine in Dec 1774 as ‘A chamber hymn’—that is, for private use at bed-time—and signed as usual ‘Minimus’ (cf 705). The first 4 of its 48 lines read ‘What though my frail eyelids refuse/ continual watching to keep,/ and punctual as midnight renews/ demand the refreshment of sleep …’ Praise! follows the practice of editors of a century or more in both reducing its length to make it more generally useful, and revising some expressions which now sound merely quaint or awkward; the present 2nd stz began ‘Beneficent Hearer of prayer,/ thou Feeder and Guardian of thine,/ my all to thy covenant care/ I sleeping and waking resign …’; it ended ‘they bring me but nearer to thee.’ The 3rd stz (arranged as the 2nd in GH), while strong in both faith and its expression, presents different but multiple problems. The original read, ‘Kind author … / thee, thee for my God I avow; my glad Ebenezer set up/ and own thou hast helped me till now./ I muse on the years … / wherein my defence thou hast proved;/ nor wilt thou relinquish … / a sinner so signally loved.’ It was felt (contrary to some editors and critics) that each ‘Ebenezer’ (1 Samuel 7:12) should be treated on its merits and in context; unlike Newton in the original of 875, for instance, Toplady at least goes some way towards providing an inbuilt translation, which this version makes more explicit. But his very personal last line may not quite convey the intended sense today; hence the alteration at this point.

The tune TREWEN, composed by David Emlyn Evans, has been judged among the finest of all those to come from Wales. Alan Luff (1990) says that beyond those borders its problem lies in finding words strong enough for it, but the Companion to Rejoice and Sing (1999) judges that ‘for less fortunate singers’ (non Welsh-speakers) these come as near as any. It is named from the composer’s boyhood home (=‘White House’) near Llandinam and appeared first in Gemau Mawl, a collection he edited in 1890. He dated it 7 years earlier; it gained a place in two English-language books in Wales in 1900, and was matched with this text by Church Praise, revised 1907. Alan Luff (Welsh Hymns and Their Tunes) commends its ‘stepwise pattern’, ‘hypnotic power’ and assured repetition, notably of its opening line recapitulated at the end. The 1965 Anglican Hymn Book uniquely arranges the hymn in 5 stzs of 88 88 beginning Inspirer and Hearer of prayer, using 12 more of Toplady’s normally omitted lines on the angels and set to new music; this has its attractions, but the main loss is that of this powerful tune which also earns the adjectives solemn, ruthless and dramatic. It should not be rushed. Christian Praise, while suggesting alternatives, sets A debtor to mercy alone to Joseph Parry’s LLANGRISTIOLUS and A sovereign protector to TREWEN.

b Farnham, Surrey 1740, d Kensington, Middx (W London) 1778. Named after his two godfathers on the insistence of his godmother, he attended Westminster Sch, London (briefly overlapping with the older Wm Cowper) and Trinity Coll Dublin (MA). Like John Wesley whom he later came to oppose, he owed much to his mother, his soldier-father having been killed in a siege before Augustus was born. ‘Mamma’ was also a refuge from an unpleasant aunt, notably during his recurring illnesses. But in 1756, attending a meeting in a barn at the age of 16 in the variously-spelt Cooladine in the parish of Ballynaslaney in the Irish countryside, he was converted through the ministry of James Morris. Morris was a gifted Methodist (later a Baptist) evangelist; a lay preacher but probably not so illiterate as AMT afterwards recalled. The crucial text was Eph 2:13, and his life took a new direction from then onwards. Strengthened in his grasp of Reformed doctrine by feasting on Thos Manton’s printed sermons from John 17 and Geo Whitefield’s preached ones in London, he published a teenage collection of verse in 1759, Poems on Sacred Subjects, with an assured touch but in highly personal ‘I/me’ mode. Without an obvious mentor, a striking opening (‘Chained to the world, to sin tied down’) can descend into absurdity (‘Put on thine helmet, Lord’; ‘O when shall I my God put on?). In 1762 he was ordained in the CofE, but resigned his first parochial charge at Blagdon, Som; he ministered for 16 months at Farleigh Hungerford nr Bradford-on-Avon. A short break was followed by two years in the small and mainly poor villages of Harpford and Venn Ottery, Devon, until he was appointed in 1768, in an exchange of benefices, to Broad Hembury (also spelt as one word), nr Honiton in the same county. Newly recovered from some days of distress and depression (‘the disquietness of my heart’), by now his life was already marked by voracious reading, eloquent preaching, single-minded piety, feverish controversy, occasional hymnwriting, and alarmingly fragile health. His ministry began to achieve remarkable results, but he also fought battles in print with the perfectionism and Arminianism of John and Chas Wesley, writing while standing at his high desk. Where he saw gospel truth at stake, he believed ‘’twere impious to be calm’; 1769 saw the publication of his translation of Jerome Zanchius (1516–90) on predestination, which provoked J Wesley to conspicuous lack of calm in his mocking rejoinder, and so the battle hotted up.

In 1775 Toplady first met Lady Huntingdon and began to preach widely in her chapels, but he was already a sick man. For health reasons he was now able to move from Devon, employing a curate there while he ministered as ‘Lecturer’ at London’s Orange St Chapel in Leicester Fields (between Trafalgar Sq and Leicester Sq) for just over 2 years, the last of his meteoric life as chest pains and other ailments multiplied. This 1693 building was owned and still used by French Reformed Protestants, but licensed for CofE services by the Bp of London, for Toplady’s sake; congregations of both rich and poor overflowed. On 19 April 1778 he could barely croak out his text before withdrawing; it was 2 Pet 1:13–14. But on 14 June, close to death, he spoke with great difficulty, to reaffirm his convictions in the doctrines of grace, which were later printed as a pamphlet. He died two months later at the age of 37, still glorying in Christ but still aiming verbal darts at Wesley, who for his part did nothing to correct the hostile rumours surrounding Toplady’s final hours.

While there were faults and blind spots on both sides, the ‘natural’ friends of Toplady’s doctrinal position now regret that his fiercely-expressed convictions (probably aggravated by illness) provided any justification for John Wesley’s equally aggressive attacks and slanderous accusations. Dr Samuel Johnson remained the friend of both men, and AMT and JW shared an ‘almost uncontrollable passion’ (Lawton) for radically ‘improving’ other people’s hymns—in which they were not alone. Toplady also resembles Chas Wesley in his disciplined rhyming and the occasional indulgence in a rolling Latinism. Occasionally he rises to the heights of Watts; often too a comparable Britishness (identifying the ‘rogue states’ and ‘axis of evil’ of his day) led him into verses rarely sung then, let alone now: ‘Let France and Austria weep in blood;/ just victims of the sword of God’! While maintaining a warm and respectful friendship with Dissenters, notably the Baptist Dr John Gill of Carter Lane, Southwark, Toplady like his other hero Wm Romaine was always fiercely Anglican, appealing often to its Thirty Nine Articles of Religion and other formularies. Part of his own apologia was The Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England, 700 pages issued in 2 volumes in 1774 to provide theologically heavyweight grounding for the preaching and writing of George Whitefield, who had died in 1770. In 1775 he took over editorship of The Gospel Magazine (‘pompous…pestilential’—J Wesley) for which he wrote, wittily but in the end obsessively, over various initials, until 1777; in 1776 came Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Worship, which among its 419 items included many vivid Scripture paraphrases (the OT seen through Christian eyes, as in Watts). He lightly revised Cosin’s BCP version of the Veni Creator (see notes on 522) and his ‘Eucharistic’ verses use that adjective in its authentic sense of ‘thanksgiving’ rather than ‘sacramental’.

Reformed hymn-books naturally include more of his hymns than others; Strict Baptists often have a generous share, such as Denham’s 1837 Selection with at least 40 (second only to Newton among CofE contributors). Spurgeon chose 32 of his hymns for Our Own Hymn Book (1866).
But even some who resist his strong doctrines have acknowledged the merit of his writing. Thus while CH has 11 of his hymns and GH 9, Congregational Praise and its successor Rejoice and Sing both find room for 4—three more than A&M, Songs of Praise etc! As in his lifetime, so now, and as with Jn Wesley, it seems hard to arrive at a balanced view of the man and his writing; some hymn-book companions and most Methodist works are hostile, Dr A B Grosart (in Julian) is lukewarm, while other would-be assessors are plainly ignorant. George Ella’s biography (2000) is now essential reading; see also George Lawton, Within the Rock of Ages, 1983, of which Ella is sharply critical. While both are sympathetic, these evangelical biographers have contrasting assessments from AMT’s boyhood onwards. See also Paul E G Cook (the 1978 Evangelical Library Lecture) as well as earlier works. In 1825 Montgomery recognised an ‘ethereal spirit’ in his writing, calling his poetic touch vivid and sparkling; ‘the writer seems absorbed in the full triumph of faith’. One difficulty is that in the 18th and 19th cents, his name became attached to several hymns from other hands; it is among the strangest of some odd omissions from the 2003 Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals which lists more than 400 others. Nos.705, 711*, 738, 773, 774, 790.