Amplest grace in Thee I find

Author: Augustus Toplady

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 >

Amplest grace with Thee I find. A. M. Toplady. [Christmas.] First published in his Poems on Sacred Subjects, Dublin, 1759, pp. 73-4, in 8 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed "On the Birth of Christ." Although not in common use in Great Britain, it has passed into a few American collections, and usually in an abbreviated form. Original text in Sedgwick's reprint of Toplady's Poetical Works, London, 1860.
[William T. Brooke]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)