April 23, 2018 Show with Thomas Garrett Isham on “Rock of Ages: Augustus Toplady, The Little-Known Man Behind the Well-Known Hymn”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:14

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy, what is today?

01:20

Today is Wednesday. No, what's today? Today is Monday. Today is

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Monday. I've frozen my tracks there because I completely forgot what day of the week it is. Monday, April 23rd, 2018.

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I think that's the first time I ever blanked out on the day of the week that long. But I am delighted to have for the very first time at the urging, actually, not only of one of my key sponsors here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Mike Gaydosch, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, but also

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I got an email from my guest himself, Thomas Garrett Isham, when he heard that I had had an interview on one of his heroes of the faith that he actually wrote a biography for, and that was

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Bishop Meckelveen, I believe, a born -again Episcopalian is the name of that book, and I was interviewing my friend

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Pastor Jacob Smith of the parish of Calvary St. George's in New York City, which is still a biblically faithful Episcopalian church.

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It is a low church in regard to worship, and they adhere to the 39 articles of religion, and we had a wonderful conversation on my guest's book.

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But today we have the man himself, Thomas Garrett Isham, who is a published author, former newspaper editor, career journalist, and licensed lay preacher in the

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Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Western Michigan, and we're going to be addressing one of his other books today,

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Rock of Ages, Augustus Toplady, the little -known man behind the well -known hymn, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Thomas Garrett Isham.

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Thank you very much, Chris, appreciate it. And if you could, typically when

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I have first -time guests on the program, we ask those guests to give a little bit about their background, what was the religion of your youth, how you were raised, if there was any religion involved at all, and how our sovereign

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Lord providentially got a hold of you and drew you to himself. I know that just because we are all saved by the same

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Christ, to the same cross, and the same gospel, does not mean that we all have identical testimonies and stories.

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I know that some folks can never recall a day when they didn't believe in Christ because they were raised in a biblically faithful home.

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Others have a more stark contrast in their stories on how they came from darkness to light, but tell us something about yourself,

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Thomas. Yeah, well, I'm one of those people who was nurtured in church,

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Presbyterian church in my case. My parents made sure I was in church every

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Sunday from my earliest childhood, in fact my baptismal day just passed us by on April 17th, so and I was baptized as an infant in my case, which was the practice among Presbyterians, and yes,

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I'd say my parents just understood that we would go to church on Sunday. There was never any excuse, nor did

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I ever think of one. I was a rather compliant child, so I grew up in the

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Presbyterian church. That's the mainline church, well before the social issues that have become so divisive in decades since.

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Of course, the Presbyterians had their fireworks in the 1920s with the liberal fundamentalist debates, but by the time

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I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, those were in the past. The most interesting thing, well

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I did the Sunday school thing, but we always went up to hear sermons, and the sermons are what

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I remember. Presbyterians are known for having erudite scholarly preachers, and we certainly had them, two that I remember, and one especially well, because I was old enough to pay some attention.

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I can't recall how, if they were very doctrinal, but they were certainly very appealing, and my vision of growing up in the

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Presbyterian church is of a man at the pulpit in a black academic gown, rather sober, but very eloquent and learned, and just very impressive, so that left me with a sense of the importance of the word.

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After high school, while I went to college, and I did the typical drift that many people raised, nurtured in a church, a go -through,

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I followed a couple of dead ends as far as getting a framework for my life, or refinding one,

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I should say, and I did refine a Christian point of view from, in my case,

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C .S. Lewis, who was, of course, I'm sure many of your listeners know who he was, an

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Anglican layman, wrote a lot of children's books, among other things, but he wrote some real serious theology.

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He was not evangelical or Reformed, but he was traditional, certainly.

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Really? I always thought that C .S. Lewis would have fallen under the category of evangelical Anglican, but I guess

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I'm wrong. Well, that's not surprising to think that, because evangelicals in the

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U .S. read him, they're probably as big as fans, whereas many

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Anglicans, or in our case, Episcopalians, have moved on to more liberal stuff. But in my case, he certainly grounded me in a very traditional sense of the

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Christian faith, although he would have been more high -church than low -church, although he said in his own writings,

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I'm not particularly high -church or particularly low -church. He tried to appeal to what he called mere

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Christianity, which is the name of one of his famous books. But he was on the

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Protestant side of things, obviously, as an Anglican. In fact, he had a grandfather who was a low -church priest, so certainly there was some family influence there that reverberated in his mind even after he'd become a great scholar at Oxford and then later at Cambridge.

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But anyway, he gave me my first real taste of adult Christianity and some real doctrinal thought, and certainly his writing brought me back into the

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Christian fold. A few years later, well, almost at the same time,

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I also encountered Francis Schaeffer, which gave me the more reformed, definitely reformed, viewpoint on things.

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Then from him, a few years after that,

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I started reading James, well, J .I. Packer, he writes, as who was definitely a reformed

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Anglican, British, and who's now been a Canadian citizen for quite a few years.

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So he's the one who really, on an adult level, let's say, made it clear to me what reformed doctrine was and how it really is

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Anglican, despite what many Anglicans think these days. That's right. The 39 articles of religion are clearly reformed.

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Oh, very much so. And Article 17 could have been written by John Calvin. Right. There's a couple others in there, too.

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In fact, the whole, the sense of all the articles are, yeah, very much reformed.

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Mm -hmm. Well, how are you finding a spiritual home in the

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Diocese of Western Michigan? What is that diocese like, as far as the Episcopal Church is concerned? Yeah, it's actually, well, the

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Midwest in the 19th century, say the mid -19th century, well, no, let me clarify that.

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In the 1830s, the Low Church and the High Church leaderships got together informally, but they decided from thenceforth the

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Low Church would concentrate more on foreign missions and the High Church more on domestic missions.

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Well, in the long run, that did not benefit the Low Church very much.

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It benefited a lot of people overseas who heard the Gospel, but it gave kind of free reign to the

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High Church Episcopalians for domestic missions, so they spread like wildfire for many decades, especially in the

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Midwest, in our diocese here in Southern Michigan. Well, it's called Diocese of Western Michigan. There's a line down the middle of the lower peninsula that divides the diocese.

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So anyway, it was founded by High Church folk, and I think it stayed true to that basic influence, and so I don't fit in particularly well here.

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But we do have a prayer book, and one can use the prayer book in worship with anyone else.

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We're using a book of Common Prayer, as it's called, and it is pretty much orthodox even today from a

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Reformed standpoint. And I get along. I mean, we have fought, my wife and I, occasionally because of social issues that especially irritate us.

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Maybe we should go elsewhere, but I think, well, I could go somewhere else where I think like everybody else, but it probably wouldn't benefit them a lot.

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Maybe I should stay where I'm planted, and we have. So we're still kind of a voice crying in the wilderness, but we're here.

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And it's become not only High Church, that's the old days, but it's become, in the last few decades, a very, very liberal diocese.

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I don't know if you're familiar with my friend Dr. Ashley Null, who is now in Germany and has been for quite a number of years, but he is a canon theologian for the

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Diocese of Western Kansas. Okay, I do know the name, yes, and I can't say

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I've read any of his stuff or know much about him, but I have come across his name, yes.

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Oh, you've got to get his book on Thomas Cramner's Doctrine of Repentance. You just have to get a hold of that.

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Oh, I will make a note of that. Yeah, and if I happen to find an extra copy, I will mail it to you.

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Oh, thank you. But I'm going to give our email address out right now for any of our listeners who would like to join us on the air.

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It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Our topic of the day is Augustus Toplady, the little -known man behind the well -known hymn, which is also the title of, or the subtitle, of the biography that our guest has written about Augustus Toplady, the title being

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Rock of Ages. And once again, if you'd like to join us, it's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

13:18

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

13:30

Suppose you have a question about Episcopalianism that you'd like to ask and you don't want to draw attention to yourself because you are

13:38

Episcopalian or something of that nature. But other than a personal and private matter, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

13:50

USA. Before we even go into the discussion of Augustus Toplady, I am going to play a version of his most beloved hymn,

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Rock of Ages, and this is a version by Keith Lancaster of the

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A Cappella Company. That's from his Reigning God CD, Praise and Harmony, A Cappella Worship.

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And I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. This is my favorite rendition. And after we play this, we'll be continuing our discussion with Thomas Garrett Isham.

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So don't go away. Here is Rock of Ages by Keith Lancaster and the A Cappella Company. Let me hide myself in thee.

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Let the water and the blood

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Be for sin a cleansing flood.

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Rock of ages, cover me.

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Not I offer now, simply to the cross

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I cling. You alone can wash me clean.

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Rock of ages, work for me.

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When I draw my final breath.

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When my eyes shall close in death.

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When I rise to worlds unknown.

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And behold thee on thy throne.

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Rock of ages, cover me.

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Not I offer now, simply to the cross

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I cling. You alone can wash me clean.

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Rock of ages, work for me.

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Praise God. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And now let us come to a point in your life,

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Thomas Garrett Isham, where you discovered and fell in love with Augustus Toplady and felt compelled to write a biography about him.

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Okay, when was that? Well, it's a name, probably because of the famous hymn,

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The Rock of Ages, that I'd heard the name. Of course, it's such an unusual last name,

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Toplady. Apparently, it is Irish, and there are some variations of a tooplady, tiplady, but in his case, it's

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Toplady. So I'd heard the name, just bits here and there.

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And at some point, and I can't really crystallize the exact point, but it struck me that something

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I read about him piqued my real interest in the fact that he was Anglican, fully reformed, brilliant in any number of ways.

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I mean, he was a great churchman. He was very much a loyal Anglican priest, pastor, predestinarian, and of course, famous hymn writer.

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He became a preacher of renown, and he was a prodigious author and scholar. So I acquired whatever written materials

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I could about him, including the 900 -plus page copy of the

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Complete Works, which isn't quite complete, but it's got most of his stuff, certainly all the important stuff in it.

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And I found him, well, extremely attractive to my views, and as a defender of the views

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I held. May I read a short thing? Oh, definitely, definitely.

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Okay, the reason this is of interest for a couple reasons, but it was spoken by the

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English poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman, who was, and this is interesting too, an ardent

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Anglo -Catholic, and no real friend of classic evangelical theology.

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But he, being a scholarly type himself, respected, admired, and just loved

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Augustus Toplady. And of course, he was a poet, became poet laureate, so he recognized good writing when he saw it.

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So he recognized Toplady as a creative and highly capable Christian thinker and communicator, which he certainly was.

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So anyway, here's what Betjeman said in a radio broadcast given over the

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West of England home service. This was in the mid -20th century, he said this.

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He said, Augustus Toplady is, to me, this is Betjeman speaking, one of the most fascinating and attractive characters of the 18th century.

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He's left behind him six large volumes of writing filled with the love of God.

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So smoothly, poetically, and clearly does Toplady write, so forceful is his personality, so startling and original his imagery, that even his most involved argument is a pleasure to follow.

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Here and there where daylight strikes, here's the little poetic part, here and there where daylight strikes through the glass windows onto high pews and galleries of little old chapels of the independent and strict

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Baptist denominations. And I believe in about half a dozen Anglican churches, the prose works of Toplady are still quoted, but to the rest of the

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English -speaking world, he is only remembered as the author of the hymn, Rock of Ages.

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So that's a wonderful statement by Sir John Betjeman, as they say, an ardent

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Anglo -Catholic, but he knew quality when he encountered it. Now just out of curiosity,

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I will go back to the same question I asked you about your own personal testimony in regard to Toplady, but before I do that, since you mentioned the strict

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Baptists, they have a reputation, and I don't want to broad brush all of the strict

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Baptists, but they do have a reputation for hyper -Calvinism, as opposed to traditional five -point

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Calvinism. And I was just wondering, has Augustus Toplady, to your knowledge, ever been charged with that, whether rightly or wrongly?

21:40

You know, I don't think he has. Well, I shouldn't say that. In my experience, I have not seen where he was referred to as a hyper -Calvinist, just a

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Calvinist. Of course, most Armenians will call anybody who is a genuine

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Calvinist a hyper -Calvinist. Well, that's what I was saying, but yeah, he specifically defended the five points, yeah.

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Right, right. Well, what can you tell us about Augustus Toplady's religion of his youth, how he was raised, and so on, and the different significant landmarks in his life in regard to the

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Sovereign Lord drawing him to himself? Yeah, okay. Well, he was born in November of 1740 at Farnham in Surrey, and he was the third of three sons.

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The first two died in infancy, so he's the first one to survive infancy.

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His mother was Catherine, and she was the wife of Richard Toplady, who was actually

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First Lieutenant Richard Toplady, who at the time Augustus was born, was sailing with his majesty's forces to the

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West Indies in what would afterwards be called the War of Jenkins' Ear.

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It was a war against the Spanish, and Lieutenant Toplady was present at the

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Siege of Cartagena, which is on the coast of present -day Columbia. He would be dead shortly thereafter, probably of yellow fever, which killed more

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British soldiers than bullets did there. So at any rate, his widow Catherine, who was 10 years his senior, was left to raise little

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Augustus as an only child, so that's how he was raised. And he was a pious lad right from the beginning.

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He had a rather nervous temperament, but he was very self -possessed and very determined.

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And his mother had several Anglican clergymen on her side of the family, and so there was that influence.

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On the father's side, the relatives were in Ireland, where they had some property and some position.

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So he was religious from the start, very academically successful.

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He was sent to the Westminster School, and like many schools, it had its bullies, and some of his prayers were connected with asking protection from the bullies.

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He figured out a good way to handle them, though, since they tended to not be very studious and or not very intelligent.

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He provided some academic help for them. Some things never change.

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That's, I guess, a centuries -old practice. But he made sure he was paid for it, and they forked over, so he became rather indispensable to them.

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He was also mistreated by some members of his mother's family. Mostly, we're talking aunts and uncles here, including some of the clergy, which was too bad.

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Not all of them, but some. As I say, he was a bit precocious, and this, it appears, tended to annoy some of them, although some were just simply unpleasant by nature.

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But there were some good aunts and uncles there, too, so it wasn't all bad. But then he went to, let's see, in 1755, he would have been 15 years old that year.

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He entered Trinity College, Dublin. That had been his father's old school, and he entered with the idea of preparing for holy orders.

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He was very successful there, as he had been earlier at the Westminster School, very successful academically.

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In 1759, he would have been 19. He was first published.

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He had a collection of poems that was published anonymously. In fact, whatever future volumes of poems or any poetry he wrote, he tended to just write anonymously.

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Now, his prose writings were not anonymous, but for some reason, he kept the poetry anonymous, although it was soon found out who was doing it,

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I think. His real, as I say, I mean, he was nurtured in the church and was very pious as a lad.

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It was actually in 1755, so we're backing up a little in his 15th year, in a barn, very humble circumstances, at Cody, Maine, which is in County Wexford, Ireland.

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He, his mother had, well, he was, had entered Trinity College, for one thing, and his mother was also trying to get a property settlement in Ireland that was connected with her late husband, so she accompanied him to Ireland.

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So anyway, top lady was Augustus, was converted to the evangelical view of the faith.

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The preacher was a man named James Morris, who was an itinerant layman who had very little education, but formal education anyway, but great gifts as a preacher.

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And a top lady in connection with this, he noted that he had sat for years under the preaching of the

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Anglican establishment with its highly educated clergy, and yet he'd never underwent spiritual rebirth until this time.

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And in fact, he said he could recall no time when he'd ever been urged to do so, to be spiritually reborn in the

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Anglican church. So instead, it was, it happens in a barn in rural Ireland among common folk, at the hands of a man who could barely sign his name, and there's another irony here, was this

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James Morris was a, actually was a follower of John Wesley, one of his itinerant preachers, and considering top lady had some real controversies with Wesley and the

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Wesley movement later on, that it's funny at the hands of Wesley, and he was, underwent this conversion.

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In fact, let me read a question from a listener, so we don't steal too much of her thunder, that is related to that.

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This is Jennifer in Gardnerville, Nevada. She said, I read an article some time ago about Augustus Toplady.

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It touched briefly on the subject of John Wesley's persecution of Toplady. Could you expound upon those particular events in Toplady's life?

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Yes, in fact, there is a very significant controversy developed.

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Initially, and probably because of this influence of James Morris, Toplady was not unsympathetic to Wesley, but the relationship soon soured somewhat.

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It didn't become personal until later, but fairly early on,

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Toplady became critical of the Wesley movement in certain aspects, and he thought

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Anglicanism should be preached within the church, and Wesley had set up somewhat of a parallel church.

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Not technically or officially, he remained an Anglican until his dying day, but the

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Methodist movement right after that split apart and went its own way. The thing that really caused the ill will between the two,

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Toplady, in his college years, just for relaxation, this is the kind of intellect he had, he had translated a work on predestination by the

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Italian Reformed theologian Jerome Zankeas, called

29:56

Zanke in England, just a shortened version, and so Toplady had translated that into English.

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He let it sit for about 10 years when the Baptist John Gill, whom he knew well, he enjoyed his preaching very much, encouraged him to bring it out, get it published, and so Toplady did.

30:21

Well, Wesley had a habit of taking other people's writings, or at least portions of them, and republishing them for his own

30:31

Methodist readers, and so he did that with Toplady's work, and not only did he do that without permission, now copyright was a little looser in those days, but you still weren't expected to take other people's writing in the way that Wesley tended to do, but Wesley also put in a rather insulting addition to the translation in which he mocked predestination, talking about one in 20 might be saved, and do what they will, and the rest are lost, do what they can, something like that, and then he signed

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Toplady's initials to that little thing he'd added. Well, that was a total insult, because that's nothing

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Toplady would have ever written, and it just made Toplady furious, so he took up his pen and thus began the battle of words between the two men, and of course,

31:46

Wesley being an Armenian, that was really the doctrinal difference between them, and so it was a battle between the

31:54

Calvinist Toplady and the Armenian Wesley, and Wesley's, some of the men who were associated with him, who did a lot of the dirty work, so to speak, anyway, and so the rest is history.

32:11

That controversy lasted from, I think, I'd say the late 1760s, well, in a sense until Toplady's death in 1778, he died at the age of 37.

32:25

Wow. Yeah, it's hard to believe if you look at, I've got the book right by me here, the collected works

32:30

I mentioned, over 900 pages of, I think, eight -point type, almost had to use a magnifying glass to plow through all of that, yet that he could have written that much in those short years, 37 years.

32:47

Anybody could write that much, preach that much, pastor that much, write those hymns, be an excellent pastor to the churches that he was the rector of.

33:02

It's quite amazing, but yeah, that was quite a controversy, and it became very bitter.

33:08

Toplady claimed there is no personal ire towards Wesley, but I think you must, one must recognize there had to be some.

33:17

He tried to stick to principle, though, and he did, he largely succeeded, I would say, and he just made the, in fact, these provocations by Wesley brought out some wonderful writing by Toplady that he might not have done, but he was provoked into it and wrote some excellent books.

33:38

There goes Romans 828 again for you. Yeah, there you go. We have to go to our first break right now, and I've actually sent you an email to call in to our different studio number because the buzzing that I mentioned before we went on the air is persisting.

33:53

So I did email you the other phone number, and if you could please call that when we come back, hopefully we will have a better connection.

34:01

If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

34:09

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

34:15

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back with our guest

34:22

Thomas Garrett Isham and more of our discussion on Augustus Toplady right after these messages from our sponsors.

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38:02

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.

38:10

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

38:17

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

38:29

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered,

38:35

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38:42

That's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

38:51

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And they are the publishers of the book we are addressing today by our guest

39:01

Thomas Garrett Isham, rock of ages, Augustus Toplady, the little -known man behind the well -known hymn.

39:08

So go to solid -ground -books .com, solid -ground -books .com to find out more information about this book by our guest.

39:15

And I assume that our guest Thomas Garrett Isham is back on line with us? I'm sorry,

39:23

I had you on mute accidentally. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm here. And I was correct.

39:29

This line is much better. The buzzing is gone. Oh, thank goodness. I apologize for the inconvenience.

39:36

We have some listener questions for you, some more listener questions, I should say.

39:42

Sterling in Greensboro, North Carolina says, Good show today, brother!

39:48

I wonder if there are any important written records of sermons or doctrinal writings of Toplady that are available?

40:00

There are, again, in the collected writings, this is another something of an irony, because he was an absolutely fabulous preacher.

40:14

And yet only 10 of his sermons are in print. And I do devote a chapter in my book to his sermons and quote quite a bit from them to give a taste of what they were like and also some thoughts concerning his preaching.

40:38

I'm not aware of separate publications of his sermons, though.

40:44

As I say, there's only 10 that are in print, although one is 13 ,000 words long.

40:53

That could have made—that plus the other nine, which are not that lengthy—could make a fairly decent volume.

41:00

I guess he must have had John Owen as a hero. Yeah, evidently. Yeah, lots of words.

41:06

But, you know, 13 ,000 words from him. As John Betjeman said, you know, his imagery is so arresting, and the force of his personality and of his faith, of his doctrines, is just—you know, you don't get bored.

41:23

It's fascinating. Well, thank you, Sterling, and keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in Greensboro, North Carolina, and beyond.

41:33

We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who asks, What have been your findings, if any, as to the origin of Rock of Ages?

41:46

Ah, well, that is a very interesting question and very appropriate considering the name of his most famous hymn.

41:56

There is—well, let's see. While you're looking, I'm going to give our email address for more listeners.

42:03

It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

42:10

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

42:21

Have you found what you're looking for, brother? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I have it in my head, but I was looking up one thing about it.

42:28

Actually, very little is known. There is a legend about it that it would have been in the 1700s, 17—probably in the early to mid -1760s, and it wasn't published for another number of years after that.

42:48

The legend is that Toplady, he was at this time probably at the curate at Lagdon, which is in Somersetshire in the

42:59

West Country of England. During a severe thunderstorm, he took shelter.

43:06

He was out in the elements, so he took shelter in a cleft in the side of a rock cliff.

43:13

And while he was in there, this thought came to him. Of course, the imagery of God as a rock is well -known anyway.

43:21

And there is a cliff. I've seen photographs of it with a cleft in it.

43:27

And it has been excellent for the tourist trade over the years that, according to the legend,

43:37

Toplady indeed took shelter in that cleft, and the seeds were planted for this hymn that he wrote.

43:44

The fact is there is no contemporary documentation for that really happening.

43:50

It is something that came up some years after Toplady's death. Now, he did burn a number of his papers not long before he died, which is unfortunate that he did that.

44:02

But he did. It's always possible he mentioned it in there. But so I guess the long and the short of it is we don't know.

44:12

Well, thank you, Gordy. There is a legend, but it's dubious.

44:17

Well, it's interesting. Something that you just said is a question of another listener.

44:22

R .J. in White Plains, New York, said, I have heard that Toplady burned some of the written versions of his sermons, which is why there are so few available today.

44:35

Is that true? And do you have any idea why he would burn them? No, but that could account for why we do have so few, why he would burn his sermons.

44:49

You know, I would think if possibly certain private papers, for some reason, he didn't want to survive him,

44:55

I can understand. No, I did not hear that, just that he did burn a significant amount of his papers not long before he died.

45:05

And of course, as I pointed out, we have copious works by him even that did survive.

45:11

So it's not that we lack material about Toplady. It's just that...

45:17

You lack sermons, though. The sermons we do lack, yes. Was he in his right frame of mind when he was near the point of death?

45:28

Yes, I would say he was in the right frame of mind right until he died.

45:34

He had tuberculosis, and he'd had it for years. And it was a very slow process as it sapped his health, never stopped him from doing what he did in life, either his writing or his researching or his preaching or his pastoring.

45:51

He was a force of nature, really, despite his illness.

45:57

And it sort of waxed and waned. He was not terribly sick by any means all the time, but there were times when he had to take to his bed.

46:08

But until the last year or so when he began to decline, and even then, that's when he was preaching at the

46:15

Orange Street Chapel in London and drawing large crowds of very notable people.

46:24

And he preached right up until very near the end, very near the end of his life.

46:31

We have a listener from Lindenhurst, Long Island, CJ, who says,

46:37

I know that in regard to pastors and other well -known people who are greatly beloved today, there are those that were not beloved in their own era.

46:48

I was wondering if this was true with Toplady, and was his hymn, Rock of Ages, as popular when he was alive as it is today?

46:59

I think it probably was about as popular. He wrote quite a number of other hymns, and they're very good hymns, too.

47:08

Rock of Ages is not the only one. It's just certainly the best known, and it has the tune by Thomas Hastings that we're familiar with.

47:20

He was, in fact, to have a chapter entitled, a not, can't even remember my own chapter titles.

47:31

Okay, here we go. A Not Unsociable Man, just to make clear that he, although he spent a lot of time in his study, he was at ease in society, and he was liked.

47:46

He was liked by his friends, obviously, because of the doctrinal controversies. He had enemies in that sense.

47:55

But no, he was a convivial sort of man.

48:01

He attended some clubs in London, and in fact, he knew

48:06

Samuel Johnson, the famous Dr. Johnson, and some of the other poets of the age, and he had a platonic but possibly romantic relationship with the historian

48:20

Catherine Macaulay, not related as far as I know to the

48:27

Thomas Macaulay, the famous historian of the next century. Well, please tell me he was a bachelor when he had this infatuation.

48:36

Yeah, he was. He was, but he'd written to somebody else saying, I am heartily tired of being a bachelor, and he gave indications that he was,

48:47

I am going to try a daring experiment, in other words, to that effect, and it is thought, in fact,

48:54

I affirm it in my chapter, that he was thinking of possibly asking Catherine Macaulay, who was a very scholarly person herself, as I say, she was a published historian, to marry him, although he never popped the question, and then in those years, his health started to fail too, and she remarried.

49:18

So it never came to pass, but it's possible he had his eye on her.

49:25

But no, he went to bed. He went to his grave a bachelor.

49:36

Do you know if he attempted to write her a love song since he was a hymn writer? Well, he did write her, not a love song as far as I know, but he did write letters that were suggestive in kind of a roundabout way of how much

49:51

I really do like you, but I suppose he was a bit of a shy man, and, you know, since he never did marry, but he was very much married to the church, very much married to Christ, you could say.

50:04

That was, I mean, he was as genuine and as focused in his Christian faith as anybody

50:09

I've come across. We have BB in Cumberland County who wants to know, can you recommend any documentary or movie about the life of Top Lady?

50:25

Documentary, no, I don't think it has been done. Well, it's about time that you get involved in one, that you get involved in making one.

50:34

It's past time, yes, right, right. He's, well, he's being rediscovered a bit in the literary world, and I hope my effort will further that, but no,

50:45

I'm not aware of any visual stuff. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now.

50:52

This is a longer than normal break. Grace Life Radio 90 .1

50:57

FM in Lake City, Florida always requires of us a 12 -minute break between our two major segments, so please be patient with us as we take this elongated break and take advantage of this time not only to write down information that our advertisers provide so that you can patronize them.

51:15

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51:34

Thomas Garrett Isham, and I'm assuming I'm pronouncing your name, brother, correctly. I never asked you up until now.

51:41

Well, actually, it is Isham. Oh, okay. I apologize for that. That's all right.

51:47

It's an old English name, and there are people with that last name who do pronounce it Isham, so I was going to let it go, but since you asked, we do use the long

51:56

I. Okay, but our email address, again, is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

52:01

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and as always, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

52:10

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52:16

Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages with more of our guest,

52:21

Thomas Garrett Isham, and our discussion on Augustus Toplady. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

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cvbbs .com. Before I return to our guest and more of our discussion on Augustus Toplady, the world -renowned hymn writer of rock of ages, we have some other important announcements to make.

01:04:40

First of all, we have coming up right around the corner, in fact next weekend, we have the

01:04:50

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01:04:55

God willing, April 27th through the 29th held at the Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

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01:05:16

I believe is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet Earth today, Richard Phillips from the

01:05:23

Second Presbyterian Church of Greenville, South Carolina, also a friend of mine who's been on this program a number of times,

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Jonathan Master who's been our guest here, David Murray who's been our guest here, and Scott Oliphant of Westminster Theological Seminary who

01:05:38

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01:09:33

Thomas Garrett Isham, on the subject we are discussing today,

01:09:39

Augustus Toplady. And we would love to take your questions at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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01:10:00

We have, let's see, we have a question from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, in Toplady's own time, was he more well known as a preacher and teacher or as a hymn writer?

01:10:22

Ah, well, let's see. I would say, well, the hymns did get around.

01:10:33

I mean, when he finally ascended to the pulpit at the Orange Street Chapel, he became very well known in London, and a lot of society people came to listen to him.

01:10:46

So he was very well known as a person, as a preacher.

01:10:52

He had also preached in addition to the rural parishes where he'd been a pastor previous to his coming to London in the last years in his life.

01:11:04

He'd also been connected with the Countess of Huntington's Connection, as it was called.

01:11:10

The Countess Selina Hastings was her actual name. She was very wealthy and had established a number of chapels.

01:11:18

Yes, I've heard of her. Lady Huntington, and what is the other very famous figure from history that was connected to her?

01:11:27

Oh, oh boy, I think you got me there. Are you thinking of another female? No, I'm thinking of a preacher, but that's okay.

01:11:35

I know that my, in fact, Mike Gadosh, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, I can recall in a couple of sermons him bringing up Lady Huntington, and I don't think it had to do with Augusta's top lady.

01:11:47

I think it had to do with another famous figure, but that's okay, you can continue. Yeah, no, that's fine.

01:11:54

She cultivated a number of preachers to preach at her chapels.

01:11:59

She established quite a number of them around to spread the Reformed and Evangelical message.

01:12:05

She was an Anglican herself, and top lady was one of them, so he was occasionally between parishes, or just when he had some occasional time away from his parishes, he would preach for her.

01:12:21

He was part of the Connection, as it was called. He obviously, his name got around that way, and even earlier in his parish preaching, he was, in the last years, when he was in the

01:12:35

West Country, he was drawing hundreds of people on Sundays, many not from his own parishes.

01:12:41

The word had gotten around. By the way, I just wanted to quickly let you know that John in Bangor, Maine, has let us know that George Whitefield was her personal chaplain.

01:12:57

Ah, okay, very good, very good. Yes, and top lady knew

01:13:03

Whitefield very well. Well, when he, I was going to just add one little thing here, and then

01:13:11

I'll work into Whitefield. I mentioned top lady's conversion.

01:13:16

His born -again experience was in this, in 1755 in Cody, Maine, and Ireland, and that was with this

01:13:24

James Morris, the itinerant preacher. But in 1758, three years later, that's when his

01:13:30

Calvinist views were actually solidified. Prior to that, he said he was a very outspoken freewheeler, as he put it.

01:13:41

But under the influence of, again, non -Anglicans in this case, a

01:13:46

Baptist, Moravian, and independent preachers, they led him in the

01:13:52

Calvinist direction. The Moravians did? That's interesting. I didn't think the Moravians were...

01:13:57

Yeah, apparently there were some, well, yeah, you don't think of them as Calvinist necessarily, do we?

01:14:03

But they also led, their prayers led Wesley to Christ when he was on the ship.

01:14:09

Right, and of course, it was, I believe, a Moravian, his Aldersgate experience when his heart was strangely warmed when he got back from Georgia.

01:14:20

That was in a Moravian chapel, I think. But yeah, well, anyway, apparently Tough Lady heard some and it had an effect on him, rather than the

01:14:28

Anglican establishment itself. Then the writings of the Puritan Thomas Manton, an earlier figure, were very much a key to his conversion, if you will, not technically a conversion, but his move to a

01:14:42

Calvinist standpoint. And then after returning to London, he received

01:14:48

Calvinist influence from, and this is where I was going to mention, George Whitefield, who was an

01:14:53

Anglican, and William Romaine, who was an Anglican, as well as the Baptist, John Gill.

01:14:59

And also, I do want to point out that even while Tough Lady was studying and listening to Reformed writers and preachers outside the established church, he did remain a staunch

01:15:13

Anglican. He was fully committed to and convinced by the doctrine of the

01:15:19

Anglican articles of religion, which we've mentioned, the 39 articles, also the prayer book and the homilies.

01:15:26

So he tended to visit these other churches, especially in his younger years, for edification along Reformed lines, but he always received the sacraments at Anglican churches.

01:15:39

So that was his orientation. As far as worship and doctrine are concerned, but yeah, he considered the

01:15:50

Anglican church, its articles and its prayer book and its homilies thoroughly

01:15:57

Reformed, as we mentioned earlier. And it's simply that Anglicans had drifted away.

01:16:04

In his book, he wrote a 700 -page book on the

01:16:09

Calvinism of the Anglican church, and he said for the first 100 years of its existence, it was staunchly

01:16:16

Calvinist. And only in, let's see, it would have been under King James.

01:16:24

James I, under whom we got the King James Bible, at that time, well, he said

01:16:31

James I was a Calvinist in religion, but he sort of played the

01:16:36

Calvinist and Arminian folks against themselves for political reasons. He wasn't entirely principled on that, but he was the last really

01:16:45

Calvinist, theologically Calvinist monarch. And after him, of course, comes

01:16:51

Charles I and the Civil War and the Regicide and all of that business.

01:16:58

Anyway, I'm rambling on here. No, this is fascinating information. We have

01:17:03

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, I apologize if I missed this earlier.

01:17:10

I am aware of what you have said about Augustus Toplady being a Calvinist, but was he a high churchman or low churchman?

01:17:20

Well, in Anglican terminology, he would have been a low churchman, yes.

01:17:26

Those terms, actually, I would say were applied later in Anglican and Episcopalian history.

01:17:39

Certainly in American history, by 1811 is kind of a watershed date where the high church and low church

01:17:47

Episcopalians really defined their differences and thus began the battle, which followed the identification with one side or the other.

01:18:00

But the Episcopal church, low church would be evangelical and reformed.

01:18:09

Influence. High church has more of the Catholic with a small C, Catholic elements in it.

01:18:16

Right. Well, some of them have the high element with a big C. Well, yeah, there are.

01:18:23

In fact, the high church, some of that morphed into Anglo -Catholicism in the 19th century.

01:18:30

And that is, well, even a little earlier in the 19th century, you had

01:18:35

John Henry Newman and others in the Tractarian movement. Yes, and he actually converted to Rome.

01:18:42

And he did, yeah. His true colors finally came out. Yeah, and he has one of the most repugnant statements that annoys me to no end every time

01:18:51

I hear it, which I think is a lie. I'm not saying that he was consciously lying, but his statement or his saying, to be steeped in history is to cease to be

01:19:01

Protestant. That just annoys me because I know the exact opposite is true in my life. The more

01:19:07

I learn of history, the more I realize that I had made, by God's mercy and grace, the right decision to leave

01:19:15

Roman Catholicism after having been raised in it. Yes, Newman was, yeah,

01:19:22

I think, well, to give him credit, which he may or may not deserve, I think he was an honest man, tried to be an honest man.

01:19:32

But yeah, he was definitely rather Jesuitical, you could say. And some of the stuff he did, and he actually tried to interpret the

01:19:42

Thirty -Nine Articles in a Catholic sense, which was an incredible stretch. Yeah, that's a real stretch.

01:19:50

Yeah, yeah, that he even tried to do that. Yeah, the Thirty -Nine Articles actually openly repudiate the

01:19:58

Romish masses as idolatry. Oh, yes, oh, definitely. And some of the fond teachings, they call them, you know, purgatory, and other specifically

01:20:09

Roman. Yeah, and especially since back then, the mass was in Latin, the

01:20:16

Thirty -Nine Articles condemn leading a worship service in another language, in another tongue.

01:20:21

That's right, yeah. They insisted on, yes, in communion in both kinds, you know, both the bread and the wine, whereas the

01:20:29

Romans reserved the wine for their clergy. Ah, yes, and the language should be in the vernacular, in the common tongue.

01:20:39

So, yeah, there's some mention from time to time in the articles specifically addressed to how we are different than the

01:20:48

Roman Church. So, yeah, there's no question, the articles are a Reformed Protestant, influenced much by both

01:20:56

Luther and Calvin. And of course, Cranmer is the one that synthesized it, and came up with the beautiful prayer book language that we use to this day.

01:21:07

We have a question from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

01:21:13

I completely understand that obviously and logically, the extreme left wing of Episcopalianism did not exist in Top Lady's day, but was there any open hostility and tension and debate between those from not only the low church, more

01:21:33

Calvinistic wing of Anglicanism, but also the high church, more Oxford movement,

01:21:39

Romish side? Well, the Oxford movement came later.

01:21:45

That was in the 1830s that that began. So Top Lady had been gone for, since 1778.

01:21:53

So again, the high church, low church language wasn't used, but there must have been different wings of leanings, especially after Queen Elizabeth tried to in some way,

01:22:10

I think, didn't she try to harmonize both the Romish and the Protestant wings? Yeah, well, she'd seen enough people burned and enough heads lopped off.

01:22:22

There was the Elizabethan compromise. Yeah, she tried to water down some of the differences, but according to Top Lady's history, most of the clergy was really basically

01:22:33

Calvinist throughout the 16th century, early century, basically.

01:22:40

And it wasn't, and James I, he remained a Calvinist, although he, as I mentioned, for expediency, he compromised a lot with forces, the early

01:22:53

Armenian forces, and I'm being a little anachronistic there, too, because, well, no, actually, the

01:23:00

Armenian, yeah, under Archbishop Laud and Charles I, that's when the

01:23:06

Armenian influence really came in, and that's what, 1630s and 40s, and of course, that's when the

01:23:12

Civil War occurred between the Calvinists and the various very radical

01:23:18

Protestant groups, too, and the Armenian, and what would be the equivalent of the high church under Archbishop Laud and King Charles.

01:23:28

We're going to go to our final break right now, and when we come back,

01:23:34

I'd like you to give us the three, at least, most significant things about Top Lady that our listeners should be aware of, and if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:23:51

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

01:23:58

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, and don't go away,

01:24:06

God willing, we'll be right back with more of our guest, Thomas Garrett Isham, and our topic of the day,

01:24:13

Augustus Top Lady, right after these messages from our sponsors. Tired of box store

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01:28:51

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01:29:43

And as I said earlier, they are the publishers of the book we are discussing today, Rock of Ages, Augustus Toplady, The Little Known Man Behind the

01:29:50

Well -Known Hymn by Thomas Garrett Isham, who until recently I was mispronouncing as Isham.

01:29:59

And thank you very much. And they are also Solid Ground Christian Books is also the publishers for another book by Thomas Garrett Isham, A Born -Again

01:30:09

Episcopalian, The Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McElveen.

01:30:15

And did I pronounce Bishop McElveen's last name correctly? That is how

01:30:20

I pronounce it, yes. We already did a program on the subject of Bishop McElveen with my friend who is the rector of the parish of Calvary St.

01:30:31

George's in New York City, the Reverend Jacob Smith. But if you could, for our listeners who missed that program, give us a summary of what that book,

01:30:40

A Born -Again Episcopalian, is about, and of course, who Bishop Charles Pettit McElveen was.

01:30:50

Oh my, okay. Yes, A Born -Again Episcopalian, that's what he was.

01:30:57

Yeah, Charles McElveen was an Easterner. He's U .S., we're talking about, born in 1799.

01:31:05

Oh, that was the year George Washington died, to give kind of a historic time frame there.

01:31:11

He lived to 1873. He was raised in a very nominal

01:31:16

Episcopalian home, but it was a very patrician home to his father, was the most prominent lawyer in New Jersey at the time, and later became a

01:31:31

U .S. senator. So, top lady, still on him. So, McElveen was raised with his brothers, it was a fairly large family, raised in social circumstances, that were.

01:31:47

He was a man of privilege. He, boy, he was, try to sum this up here, he underwent a born -again experience while attending

01:31:58

Princeton University. I wonder how often that happens today.

01:32:04

Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah. No, there was a revival there, and he had an experience, he and quite a number of other students, and then he ended up going to seminary.

01:32:17

At the time, there was no Episcopalian seminary in this country. Not too many years later,

01:32:23

General Seminary opened in New York, but at this time, there wasn't one, so that's why he went and studied with the

01:32:28

Presbyterians, but he remained a, who were excellent for him anyway, by the way.

01:32:34

He certainly was very inclined towards their teaching, their

01:32:41

Reformed teaching, and he, so that launched him as a Reformed Episcopalian, and he became a, well, he was a chaplain at West Point.

01:32:56

He had a parish. His first parish was actually before he became a West Point chaplain. It was in Georgetown, so he was around prominent people there, and so they heard him preach, so his fame grew from a fairly young age, and he met a number of prominent people when he was at West Point.

01:33:18

A revival started at West Point under his auspices, which cut both ways.

01:33:25

It was good for the cadets, certainly, we think, from a Christian point of view. Some people were very unhappy with it because this is where we train our soldiers, and we don't want a revival to be going on there.

01:33:39

They didn't think that was appropriate for West Point. Yeah, because they thought that Christianity would make men soft because of a slanderous caricature that they had.

01:33:48

Yes, but it did cause some blowback there, but so from there, he went to a parish in Brooklyn, New York, a bigger parish than he'd had even in Georgetown, and at the age of, he would have been 33, he became

01:34:04

Bishop of Ohio, so the cultivated Easterner went to the wild frontier, so to speak.

01:34:11

That would have been in 18, excuse me, 1832, and Ohio was a pretty wild place at the time, and he was not only bishop, he, for all the

01:34:22

Anglican, Episcopalians in the state, he was also the president of the college in Gambier, Ohio, and that's

01:34:35

Kenyon College, by the way, Kenyon College and Seminary, so he had his hands full being both a bishop and the college president.

01:34:43

He did eventually get out of the college position, and that was passed off onto somebody else, but he ran the college for about 10 years, too.

01:34:53

And he just, yes. I was just going to say that we will have to have you back on the program.

01:34:59

Perhaps I could even have Reverend Jacob Smith co -host with me, since he loved your book so much, to readdress

01:35:06

Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvain, and once again, you can get the book from Solid Ground Christian Books titled

01:35:14

A Born -Again Episcopalian at Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com.

01:35:20

If you have a final word about him so we can move on to Top Lady again. Oh yeah, well,

01:35:27

McIlvain was the principal leader of the evangelical wing of the

01:35:34

Episcopal Church from the 1830s, 40s, 50s, well up until his death, actually, in 1873.

01:35:42

So a man of many parts. He knew Abraham Lincoln.

01:35:48

He knew, well, just a lot of notable people, both because of his social background and just in the career he went through.

01:35:59

But he was a very humble man. He knew he was a sinner like everyone else, and he was very introspective, and yet he was a very public man, too, in the work he did.

01:36:09

But yeah, I'd love to do a show with him or on him. Well, you can't do it with him.

01:36:15

No, no. Unless we have a seance or something. Let's do it, maybe. So we'll make plans to do that.

01:36:24

When we go off the air, I'll schedule you for another interview and we could revisit the life of Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvain.

01:36:31

As far as our topic, Augustus Top Lady, we have a listener in Kinross, Scotland, Murray, who says,

01:36:40

Is it your understanding that Top Lady's death was hastened by excessive study?

01:36:48

I would agree with that. Yes, he, in a sense, burned himself out.

01:36:55

He would study. He would read. He read all kinds of theological works, of course.

01:37:03

And he read sermonic literature. And of course, he wrote copiously, just a lot of writing.

01:37:11

And he would do that into the wee hours of the morning. I mean, we're talking three and four o 'clock in the morning.

01:37:18

And he was doing this while he was pastoring parishes. And he did not neglect his parishioners at all.

01:37:25

He did make it clear when he would first become the rector or curate or vicar, there's little technical differences there, but the head of a parish anyway, he would make it clear to his people that he would spend a certain amount of time in his study, that that was important to him, but he would always be available to them.

01:37:44

And that pretty much set the pattern. But yes, I agree that people think he, that did hasten his death.

01:37:50

He did have consumption or tuberculosis, as we call it. But yeah, he worked,

01:37:57

I could say he was sort of a force of nature. And he was dedicated to his studies. And his hours were not conducive to taking the best care of himself.

01:38:11

Did you say he was 26? 37 when he died. Oh, 37. I don't know where I got 26 from.

01:38:18

Yeah, 37. Well, it's still very young, obviously. Yes, yes. Well, thank you,

01:38:23

Murray and Kinross Scotland. Please keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and spreading the word in Kinross Scotland and the

01:38:31

United Kingdom and beyond. Now I'd like you to give those aforementioned requested three major things about Augustus Toplady that we should remember.

01:38:45

Yeah, I was trying to distill something in my mind here. Well, the first thing is how he was a man of parts, you could say.

01:38:51

He had within the Christian sphere, a number of real talents.

01:38:58

So I want to emphasize that. He was, as I said, a dedicated Anglican churchman, despite the fact that he was very inspired by Reformed preachers and theologians of non -Anglican denominations.

01:39:14

And he was always on good terms with them too. So he was a very dedicated churchman and priest.

01:39:23

He was, as I just was mentioning, a very dutiful pastor, some rather humorous stories about some of the encounters he had with his parishioners, especially when he was in the

01:39:37

West of England. And you had a rather uneducated clientele for your preaching and pastoring.

01:39:49

But anyway, some interesting anecdotes there. Of course, he was a very talented hymn writer.

01:39:56

And I do quote from some of his other hymns in addition to Rock of Ages in the book.

01:40:01

And his other hymns are worth looking into. Just the beauty of his language and his thoroughgoing belief in God's providence in all aspects of his life.

01:40:17

And as I said, he was a preacher of renown, both when he was in the

01:40:22

West country and then really preached in front of a, well,

01:40:28

I guess you could say a congregation's worthy of his stature when he got to London.

01:40:35

He was very well -received there. And he was a prodigious author, which has to do with these late nights.

01:40:44

And a scholar, he was a very, he didn't just write, but he just studied a lot and knew a lot and was a very conscientious scholar.

01:40:57

So that was just one point I was gonna make. What was another one here? Oh, that he, his magnum opus, although all his writing is worth reading, but his longest book was entitled, and it was 700 pages long,

01:41:17

Historic Proof, rather cumbersome title, but they used these in those days,

01:41:23

Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England.

01:41:28

Wow. It's just excellent the way he traces the Reformed nature of the

01:41:34

Church and how it has drifted away from that and in different directions over the years.

01:41:41

Is that available in print today? In its completion in the collected works, you can find it there.

01:41:49

Yeah, I don't think there's a separate volume, but I wouldn't want to be held to that. Well, I think it's time for you to give our friend

01:41:55

Mike Gaydosh a call. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if it's in his books or not, but yeah, yeah, it's, as I say, it is in the collected works, the entire book, so very worth reading.

01:42:11

I guess I was gonna just mention the top lady, near his death, it just struck me, it's an interesting incident occurred when he was on very fragile condition and clearly his death was not too far away.

01:42:33

Certain followers of John Wesley spread rumors that top lady had recanted all of his

01:42:41

Calvinist views and this was, of course, just an outrageous lie.

01:42:46

It was just a mischievous thing to do and when top lady heard about that, despite his physical condition, his coughing and his weakness, he managed to visit the

01:42:58

Orange Street Chapel, his church where he preached, he managed to get there one last time and almost dragged himself into the pulpit to inform his congregation that no such recantation had occurred.

01:43:14

Praise God! Yeah, yeah, that his views remained rock solid, we could say, for Calvinism and reformed tradition and everything else he'd always stood for.

01:43:26

He went, he never moved one inch from that and so he was short of breath and too weak to really give a full sermon on it, but he assured them that his views had not changed and he advised his listeners to just consult his books and other writings to learn in detail just what his views had been.

01:43:47

So he put in a plug for his own his own views there for his own books and not long after this, on August 11, 1778, at, as we said, the age of 37, he died peacefully at his residence in London and his body was entombed in a crypt beneath the chapel of Whitefield's Tabernacle, which had been built for none other than George Whitefield for him to preach in London.

01:44:15

And the top lady remains entombed there to this day, even though the building was burned down once and was rebuilt, it was been remodeled and in World War II, the last

01:44:29

V2 rocket launched by the Germans to hit London struck the

01:44:36

Whitefield Tabernacle of all places, obliterated it and it was rebuilt in 1957.

01:44:45

So there's a building there again and the top lady remains in the crypt below, never disturbed by all the commotion above.

01:44:55

So that's about all I can think of. Yeah, that's, I don't know if that's where my dear friend, who's now in eternity with Christ, Al Stein had a photograph of himself taken behind a pulpit that was either

01:45:12

Wesley's pulpit or in Wesley's chapel, one of the other. So obviously if it was in Wesley's chapel, it may not have been original, but my friend

01:45:22

Al - This was Whitfield's here. That's what I, did I say, who did I say? I meant Whitfield. You said

01:45:27

Wesley. Oh, I meant, I actually meant George Whitefield is what I meant. That's what I thought. Because my friend

01:45:33

Al Stein was one of these very rare individuals who was in assemblies of God, pastor and bishop, and yet he had become a five -point

01:45:42

Calvinist. Yes, they're very Arminian, aren't they? Yeah, and he had as his greatest hero that was not preaching or writing the

01:45:57

God -breathed words of our Savior, you know, as far as an uninspired, for lack of a better term, his greatest hero of an uninspired human was

01:46:10

George Whitfield. And he tragically was killed in a car accident and called home to be with the

01:46:20

Lord, but he was truly a unique brother in Christ. And I always enjoyed interviewing him on the old

01:46:26

Iron Sharpens Iron radio program, but truly amazing.

01:46:32

And you also earlier on mentioned something that I think bears repeating, especially since Solid Ground Christian Books is in the process of trying to get enough people to pre -order in a pre -publication offer that they have the complete works of Thomas Manton, the 22 -volume hardback set on smith's stone on acid -free paper.

01:47:04

They're trying to get this 22 -volume set back into print and hardback. The 22 -volume set that Charles Haddon Spurgeon called a mountain of sound theology by the 17th century giant of theology,

01:47:20

Thomas Manton. Can you tell us again what the connection was as far as an inspiration to Toplady?

01:47:27

Yes, well, yeah, Toplady was probably, Thomas Manton was the most influential figure in converting

01:47:38

Toplady to a Calvinist view. Yes, and that is the connection there.

01:47:48

Yes, of course, Thomas Manton was a Puritan and he was the principal influence.

01:47:54

Of course, Toplady was influenced by George Whitefield and William Romaine and other

01:48:01

Anglicans and the Baptist John Gill, but Manton was the main influence on bringing him into an understanding and acceptance of a

01:48:10

Calvinist view. Great, well, once again, if you want to find out more about this pre -publication order, well, you'll get a 22 -volume set of the complete works of Thomas Manton, 17th century giant of theology.

01:48:26

Go to solid -ground -books .com, solid -ground -books .com and put in your pre -publication order and your debit or credit card will not be charged until the books go into print so you don't have to worry about that.

01:48:41

The caveat is they need enough people to pre -order it in order to go forward with this project because as I said, these are hardback volumes, smith's own on acid -free paper.

01:48:55

They don't want to do anything less quality in regard to this treasure trove of wisdom.

01:49:03

So go to solid -ground -books .com and find out more about that. Let's see, we have an anonymous listener who says,

01:49:13

I have loved ones in the Western Michigan area. Can you recommend a thoroughly

01:49:19

Calvinistic, Low Church, Anglican, or Episcopalian congregation? That is an excellent question, and I cannot.

01:49:29

I don't think there is one in this diocese. And there is a

01:49:35

PS. I'm also looking for one in Maryland as a PS. Yeah, well,

01:49:40

I wouldn't have any idea about Maryland, but I am not aware of one in our diocese.

01:49:48

Well, looks like you have to start one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:49:54

We, in the past, we have had, I at one time was, or for a number of years, attended our diocesan conventions, and we used to have some clergy who would say some things that were very uh, registered very nicely with me, and I think those people have mostly been, have left.

01:50:20

They've retired or left. But I think I indicated earlier that this diocese was founded by high churchmen initially, and it's always borne that stamp,

01:50:33

I think, ever since. So there's never been a real organized Low Church identity here, and it unfortunately remains the same, other than a few isolated individuals, probably, or, yeah, a voice crying in the wilderness.

01:50:52

Well, I'd like you, before we run out of time, let our listeners know also about your book

01:50:59

Contramundum. Oh my, you've been doing your research.

01:51:05

That is, that stems more from my political interests.

01:51:13

That is about Joseph de Maistre. It's a biography, sort of an intellectual biography.

01:51:21

He was a counter -revolutionary writer during the period of the French Revolution.

01:51:27

He was a writer in French. He actually is from, I can't even think off the top of my head here, one of the bordering areas by France.

01:51:40

He wasn't technically French, but he wrote in French and was from French culture. And he wrote principally against the

01:51:46

French Revolution, which, as I say, that was more of a political interest of mine because he was a

01:51:54

Roman Catholic, which I'm definitely not. But his political writings against the

01:52:02

Revolution are very harmonious with conservative thinking, you know, over the years.

01:52:11

And he's very interesting from that part. Plus, he was just an interesting person too. But you borrowed the phrase from Athanasius, the phrase that is connected with him, against the world.

01:52:24

Oh yes, the Contramundum, yes. He was very much an individual, even among the conservatives of the time.

01:52:32

He kind of went his own way. But he was just a very brilliant thinker.

01:52:39

You don't find Calvinism in him. So as I say, it wasn't so much the religious views, but his political writings and his more general philosophical writings.

01:52:50

Very interesting fellow. If somebody wants to read something quite different from the

01:52:56

Reformed folks like McElveen and Toplady, that are, of course, are in line with my own views, or I should say my views are in line with theirs.

01:53:10

Right. I know a lot of Calvinists, for instance, love to quote G .K. Chesterton, who was a

01:53:15

Roman Catholic. So in regard to political things,

01:53:22

I'm sure that some of our listeners who are more actively involved in politics, especially, may want to look that up.

01:53:30

And by the way, you can order most books that are offered on Iron Trip and Zion Radio through our sponsors,

01:53:36

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for BibleBookService .com.

01:53:45

And make sure that you mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio if you order from them.

01:53:51

And I'd like you now to have three minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we go off the air today.

01:54:00

Oh my, three minutes. Well, let's see.

01:54:05

I guess I want to return to the Toplady. I'm holding this volume in my hands.

01:54:14

It has a very nice cover too, by the way. I can thank Mike Gaydosh for that.

01:54:21

What do we want to say about him? Let me... Right as urge? Yeah. I was just going to announce our email address one more time if anybody has time to squeeze in a question.

01:54:31

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We may have time for one more. But anyway, continue,

01:54:37

I'm sorry. Yeah, well here, let me... Let's see.

01:54:44

Let me just summarize him. I'm reading a blurb on the back here about Toplady, of course, being the author of the classic

01:54:52

Hymn Rock of Ages. He was a man converted at the age of 15 while attending a country revival in Ireland.

01:55:02

And it wasn't until then that he'd had the... Even heard about regeneration or rebirth in any real sense until that time.

01:55:13

And then, let's see, would it be three years later? He had a second, we could say, type of conversion to Calvinistic principles.

01:55:24

And then he went on to make his mark as just a prolific author and scholar, a stirring revivalist and a dutiful cleric.

01:55:36

Calvinist controversialist, very interesting controversies with John Wesley and his

01:55:42

Methodist movement. An ardent defender of the doctrines of grace, of course.

01:55:48

And he had... Oh, gosh, an unmatched gift for combining theological intellect with warm emotion.

01:55:58

In fact, he stressed that, that, you know, he says even the devils... Of course, he's quoting the

01:56:04

New Testament here. Even the devils can get their theology right. They just don't believe it. And so if you don't have that warm, believing emotion, you know, have just the bare doctrines, you're only getting half of the picture.

01:56:17

He was very much into the head and heart orientation towards the faith.

01:56:25

And he had just an irrepressible desire to save souls and to restore the

01:56:31

Church of England to its founding principles, which he was partly successful in doing at the time.

01:56:39

And there have always, throughout Anglican and Episcopal history since then, there have been revivals of those principles from time to time, although they are certainly not the governing principles of the

01:56:52

Episcopal or Anglican Church of today. But we can always hope for tomorrow.

01:57:00

Yes, and I think that from what we have learned about Augustus Toplady and also

01:57:08

Bishop McElveen and other great Anglicans of history that we have addressed on this program,

01:57:14

Thomas Cranmer, who we have addressed in previous programs with Dr. Ashley Null, we can use this information to,

01:57:23

I think, bring biblical truth to our Episcopalian and Anglican friends who are either lost or caught up in Roman Catholic leanings or what have you.

01:57:34

We can steer them to the truth of the doctrines of grace by reminding us, reminding them,

01:57:40

I should say, of these great men of faith who were thoroughly Anglican while being thoroughly Reformed. Mm -hmm, yeah, that's my hope in writing the books, yes.

01:57:51

Amen. Well, once again, I want to make sure that our listeners have the website for Solid Ground Christian Books.

01:57:57

It's solid -ground -books .com solid -ground -books .com

01:58:02

And you could look up our guests' books by just typing in I -S -H -A -M in the search engine for Isham, I -S -H -A -M.

01:58:12

Do you have any other contact information that you care to give? No, I would just suggest contacting the publisher and that's where the books are.

01:58:26

Great. That's solid -ground -books .com. And I want you all to also mark your calendars for tomorrow.

01:58:32

We have Jim Osmond returning to the program to discuss his book, Selling the Stairway to Heaven, critiquing the claims of heaven tourists, those who claim to have been to heaven after a near -death or brief death experience.

01:58:49

Jim Osmond is going to clear up fact from fiction regarding to these reports. So please tune in tomorrow for that broadcast.

01:58:57

Also, don't forget that we have on this coming Thursday, April 26th, we have

01:59:04

Marco Barone, who is the blogger at philosophyofthecross .blogspot

01:59:10

.com. He's going to be discussing his book, Luther's Augustinian Theology of the

01:59:15

Cross. That's this Thursday. We're still working on finalizing this Wednesday's program. But I want to thank you so much,

01:59:22

Brother Isham, for being on the program today. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:28

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater