Rock of Ages:

A Defense
of True Religion
Mark D. Anthony, Sr.
Augustus Toplady is best known for writing the hymn
Rock if Ages, first published in 1776. About eight
years after its publication, the now popular story of
the occasion of its writing was first promulgated. The
Vicar of Blagdon, Toplady's former parish, related the
following tale:
As young Augustus Toplatfy, curate if Blagdon in S otnerset,
England, strode about the rocJ:.y countryside one Sttndqy
qfternoon in 1776, he sa}v dark storm clouds gathering. As the
sJ:.y became increasingly threatening and thunder rolled over the
rocJ:.y promentaties if Burrington Combe, the anxious pastor
searched for a place if safety from the coming storm. Spying a
small ledge between towering boulders, Toplacfy crept finder the
shelteting rocks and crouched in their mighty shadows }vhile the
storm raged. While the }vind roared and the thunder crashed,
the words if the beloved f?ymn came unbidden to his mind,' and
taking a scrap if paperfrom his pocket, he hastilY scratvled the
inspired verses.
Visitors to Burrington Combe today are told this
story even today. However, the true story of Rock of
Ages lies instead in a great theological debate between
Augustus Toplady and the Wesley brothers.
In the early 1770's, Augustus Toplady and John
Wesley were engaged in vigorous public theological
debates over the doctrine of sanctification. This was
but one issue which the two took up in pamphlets,
letters, and sermons against each other's doctrine, and
their disagreements were always based on the same
clear difference: Toplady was defending Calvinistic
doctrine against Wesley's Arminianism. The debate
between the two covered the spectrum of Reformed
theology, including especially election, justification, and
sanctification. Those who today decry the use of the
term heresy in polemic writing would be shocked by the
tone and language of the debate between these two.
John Wesley had developed a view of sanctification
that teaches Christians have the ability to attain sinless
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perfection in this life, reaching the point where they
are able to stop consciously sinning. Calvinists, on
the other hand, believe that man is not capable of
sinless perfection in this life. The Calvinist view of
sanctification is that it "is the work of God's free grace,
whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the
image of God, and are enabled more and more to die
unto sin, and live unto righteousness." [WSC Q. 36].
Toplady saw Wesley's doctrine of Sanctification as
wrong not only because it taught the possibility of
sinless perfection, but doubly wrong because it taught
that a person might live all his life in perfection and yet
lose that perfection by sinning - and even be finally lost
forever. Sinless perfection is not possible in this life
according to the Westminster Confession:
This sanctification is throughout in the whole man,
yet imperfect in this life; there abideth still some
remnants of corruption in every part: whence
ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh
lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh. [WCF XIII.!!].
Nor can a man be finally lost who has once been
justified. The Confession sets forth the correct view:
God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that
are justified: and although they can never fall from
the state of justification, yet they may by their sins
fall under God's fatherly displeasure, and not have
the light of his countenance restored unto them,
until they humble themselves, beg pardon, and
renew their faith and repentance. [WCF XI.V.]
Toplady, in the Gospel Magazine, which he edited, fired
as one of his final salvos in the debate an article in
which he compared the "debt of sin" with the English
"national debt." ''At the rate of one sin each second,"
he wrote, "every man at twenty is guilty of 630,720,000
sins; at fifty, of 1,576,800,000; and at eighty of
2,522,880,000." Since no one can payoff such a debt,
we rely on Christ alone to redeem us, he concluded.
Following this conclusion was a song of three six-line
stanzas entitled: ''A living and dying prayer for the
holiest believer in the world."
Rock if Ages, clift for me,
let me hide n!Jse!f in Thee,'
let the Jvater and the blood,
from tf?y riven side which flowed,
be if sin the dottble cure;
cleanse me from its guilt and power.
Rock of Ages: A Defense of True Religion
Not the labors if JJ!} hands
can fulfill tf?y law's demands;
could JJ!} zeal no respite know,
could "!} tears forever jlOlV,
all for sin could not atone;
thou must save, and thou alone.
When II!} pilgrimage I close,
Victor 0 Jer the last if foes,
JT7hen I soar to Jvorlds ttnknOJvn,
and behold Thee on Tf?y throne,
Rock if Ages, clift for 1m,
let me hide JJ!}se!f in Thee.
Note especially the second stanza in the context of
the subject matter of the article to which the song
was first affixed. There was also another swipe at the
Wesleyan doctrine in the song in that the first stanza
was plagiarized from the preface to Charles Wesley's
"Hymns on the Lord's Supper" published in 1745:
o Rock if Israel, Rock if Salvation,
Rock stmck for me, let those two streams
if Blood and Water which once gllshed old if Tf?y side,
bting dOlvn Pardon and Holiness into my SOIlI.
Toplady was used by God as a great preacher, writer,
apologist, and hymn-writer. He was born November
4, 1740, in Surrey, England. He attended Westminster
School, London, England, and Trinity College, Dublin,
Ireland. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1762, and
served as curate at Blagdon and Farleigh. In 1766, he
became vicar of Broadhembury, Devonshire. Toplady
left the Anglican church in 1775, moved to London,
and began preaching at the French Calvinist church in
Leicester Fields. Toplady died a relatively young man,
August 11, 1778, at Kensington, Middlesex, England,
of tuberculosis. This disease had afflicted him for
some years. He is buried at Whitefield's Tabernacle,
Tottenham Court Road, London, England.
His works include:
The Docttine if Absolttte Predestination Stated and
Asserted, 1769
Histotic Proif if the Docttinal Calvinism if the Chllrch
if England, 1774
The Church if England Vindicated from the Charge if
Arminianism, 1774
Poems on Sacred Suljects, 1775
Psalms and Hymns, 1776
you come
he gave me
dear self, U""'l".L, ..... y
uo!Such
heav.en yet,
andheav.en
of
employ of
they sing. ,;
thr(me,
wastslain1
Thy blood,
arid people
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