A debtor to mercy alone. A. M. Toplady. [Assurance of Faith.] Contributed to the Gospel Magazine, May, 1771, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and included in Toplady's Psalms & Hymns, 1776, No. 313, with the alteration, stanza i., line 4, of "offering" to "offerings." In 1860 the 1771 text was included in Sedgwick's reprint of Toplady's Hymns, &c, p. 140. In the older collections it was in most extensive use, both in the Church of England and with many of the Nonconformist bodies, but it is now very generally omitted from modern collections in Great Britain, although in America it still holds a prominent position.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Toplady, Augustus Montague, the author of "Rock of Ages," was born at Farnham, Surrey, November 4, 1740. His father was an officer in the British army. His mother was a woman of remarkable piety. He prepared for the university at Westminster School, and subsequently was graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. While on a visit in Ireland in his sixteenth year he was awakened and converted at a service held in a barn in Codymain. The text was Ephesians ii. 13: "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The preacher was an illiterate but warm-hearted layman named Morris. Concerning this experience Toplady wrote: "Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should b… Go to person page >
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