Come, O fount of every blessing

The author of this hymn is a challenge to the doctrine of the previous one— not in his theology, which is the same, but in the often-told account of Robert Robinson’s apparent fall from the grace in which he once stood, and by which he wrote the hymn. Its text is a combined personal testimony and prayer from the author’s early 20s; ‘prone to wander’ (3.5) may be true of every Christian, but was sadly prophetic of his own erratic career after a brightly promising start. It featured first in the local 1759 production from London, A Collection of Hymns used by the Church of Christ in Angel-Alley, Bishopsgate. (This beautifully-named street no longer exists, though similar names survive; it was not far from St Helen’s church, but may derive from the ‘angel’ coins at the nearby Bank of England rather than any heavenly messenger.)

The original text seems to attract revisers, from Charles Wesley to HTC. Martin Madan was probably wise, a year after its first appearance, to drop a final stz beginning ‘O that day when, freed from sinning,/ I shall see thy lovely face,/ clothèd there in blood-washed linen …’ But such writing, driven here by even a half-rhyme, may help us understand how the grace of God became ‘like a fetter’ (3.3) rather than the breaking of fetters as in Scripture (Luke 4:18 etc). Edward Bickersteth’s 1841 collection printed ‘Let that grace break every fetter/ that withholds my heart from thee.’ HTC removes that reference; its changes proved too radical for Praise!, which does however try to deal positively with stz 1. This had, ‘Teach me some melodious sonnet’ [see 103A, tune], later emended to ‘melodious measure’; and continued, ‘sung by flaming tongues above’ [see 162, text]. The same rhymes half-persist in stz 2, with its famous or notorious ‘Here I raise my Ebenezer … / and I hope by thy good pleasure …’ (see HSB 230–232, 2002; article and correspondence). There is a difference between valuing biblical names and events (1 Samuel 7:12) and persisting in a use of quaintly obscure expressions of them. ‘Interposed’ is changed in 2.8; 3.1–2 read ‘O to grace how great a debtor/ daily I’m constrained to be …’ This version is the Praise Trust preference.

Three tunes are suggested, BLAENWERN and SICILIAN MARINERS by crossreference to 714 and 649; John Hughes’ CALON LÂN as the first printed choice, as in GH; see 91A. The 3 different options printed with the words in CH (each with its own flavour and mood, and including 82 and 488 in Praise!) illustrate both the variety available and some editorial or congregational uncertainty.

b Swaffham, Norfolk 1735, d Showell Green, nr Birmingham, Warwicks 1790. His first job was as a London barber’s apprentice, during which time he preferred his books to his business. When he was 17 he heard Geo Whitefield preach on ‘the wrath to come’; he had gone intending to mock, but was awakened and remained ‘disturbed’ and in darkness, finally finding Christian assurance after 2–3 years of struggle. In 1758 he began to preach occasionally in a Calvinistic Methodist Ch at Mildenhall, Suffolk, before founding an independent congregation at Norwich. Then for nearly 30 years, from 1761, he pastored the Stone Yard Baptist Chapel, Cambridge, having persuaded the church to agree to ‘open communion’ (that is, to all baptized Christians), while supplementing his income as a coal and corn merchant and farmer. He wrote widely, on the divinity of Christ (1776) and in the next year on The History and Mystery of Good Friday (1777) and on Baptism (A History of Baptism and Baptists, 1790). He also became a leading figure in campaigns for civil and religious liberty, the abolition of slavery, and American independence. 2 biographies (by Dyer and Wm Robinson) are thought to exaggerate the influence the Unitarians had on his later years; Jn Gadsby (1861) and others have included his story in their various compilations. He is thought to have written only 11 hymns; Grosart (in Julian) calls them ‘terse yet melodious, evangelical but not sentimental, and on the whole well wrought’. Nos.317, 894.