connection with the Lock Hospital, near Hyde Park Corner, which introduced Evangelicalism into the West End. For its use he prepared and published A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, extracted from various authors, and published by the Reverend Mr. Madan. London: printed by Henry Cock: and sold at the Lock Hospital, near Hyde Park, MDCCLX. The book was plainly modelled on Whitefield's, and often uses his textual alterations. Its 170 Hymns were put together without arrangement, beyond a grouping of "Sacramental Hymns". There was nothing to distinguish it as being of the Church of England. Its choice of Hymns and bright and cheerful tone gave immediate satisfaction. For some six years it had the field to itself, reaching a second edition in 1763, a fourth in 1765, and a twelfth in 1787. Madan's knack in reconstructing the work of other hands made his book a permanent influence both for good and evil. A number of familiar Hymns still bear the marks of his editorial revision. Madan was a musician, and, to accompany his hymn book, printed A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, never published before, 1769. Edited by M. Madan.36 It was reprinted both in England and America, and included 33 tunes from his own hand. These florid strains, then new, gained much vogue: "Helmsley" and "Huddersfield" still survive. The contempt expressed for these tunes by the modern Anglican school views them out of perspective. If they tickled the ear, it was with a view of arousing faculties that slept through the droned notes of parish Psalmody and of quickening the pace of the singing. And in this they were successful.

The humorous and sturdy John Berridge was as early on the field as Madan, but less effective. He published A Collection of Divine Songs, designed chiefly for the Religious Societies of Churchmen in the neighbourhood of Everton, Bedfordshire (1760). As may be inferred, Berridge was already a "Methodist", a field-preacher, and encourager of societies outside the parish churches. His

Generally called "The Lock Collection".

collection is mostly Wesleyan, with some Hymns from Watts and some originals. With a change in doctrinal views Berridge became

"Not wholly satisfied with the collection [he] had published. The bells, indeed, had been chiefly cast in a celebrated Foundery, and in ringing were tunable enough, none more so, but a clear gospel tone was not found in them all. Human wisdom and strength, perfection and merit, give Sion's bells a Levitical twang, and drown the mellow tone of the gospel outright.""

With such convictions Berridge attempted to suppress his Divine Songs, buying and destroying every copy he could secure. During a six months' illness in the early seventies he composed a large number of Hymns. A few of these appeared in The Gospel Magazine, or elsewhere: most were laid aside till in 1785 he printed the whole body of them as Sion's Songs, or Hymns: composed for the use of them that love and follow the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. By John Berridge, M.A., Vicar of Everton (London). There were 342 Hymns of a homely type, without classification or even an index of first lines, but numbered as a hymn book. They were sung no doubt through the circuit of Berridge's preaching and societies, but made no marked impression on Evangelical Hymnody. New editions in 1805 and 1820 may have been as much designed for reading as for singing, as was J. C. Philpots' reprint of 1842.38

Seven years after Madan's Collection and Berridge's earlier hymn book, Richard Conyers, Vicar of Helmsley in Yorkshire, published A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, from various authors: for the use of serious and devout Christians of every denomination (London, 1767). This is the third of the Church of England hymnals, revealing by its title how broad was the sympathy of the early Evangelicals. The printing of a fifth edition at York in 1788 shows Preface to Sion's Songs, 1785.

$7

There is a good account of Berridge and his Hymns in Thos. Wright, Augustus M. Toplady, &c., London, 1911, pp. 252-60. Gadsby's Memoirs of Hymn-Writers and Compilers is fuller, but inaccurate. Berridge's best remembered Hymns are: "Jesus, cast a look on me", "O happy saints, who dwell in light", and "Since Jesus freely did appear" (in altered forms).

that it helped to extend and provide for Hymn singing at the North. Conyers followed Madan's lead and appropriated fully two thirds of the contents of Madan's Collection. He was however happy in getting his friend Cowper interested in his book and in securing contributions from that poet. His second edition of 1772 will always have a place as the original source of "There is a fountain filled with blood", and "O for a closer walk with God".

The fourth of the Evangelical series appeared in 1775. That was also the year of Romaine's philippic against the new Hymnody, in which he reveals the situation as he saw it:

"The hymn-makers . . . have supplied us with a vast variety, collection upon collection, and in use too, new hymns starting up dailyappendix added to appendix-sung in many congregations, yea admired by very high professors to such a degree, that the psalms are become quite obsolete, and the singing of them is now almost as despicable among the modern religious, as it was some time ago among the prophane.""

Romaine, no doubt, is speaking not of the Church at large, but of the small group of churches affected by the movement which he represented at London, and De Courcy (whose recent appointment by Lord Dartmouth as Vicar of St. Alkmund's, Shrewsbury, caused a great stir) represented at the West. The latter's A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, extracted from different authors . . . with a preface by the Reverend Mr. De Courcy (Shrewsbury, 1775: 2nd ed., 1782), might seem a defiance of Romaine; for its distinction lay in the increased number of authors from whom it drew, adding for their accommodation "appendix to appendix" in its later editions.

But in the project of widening the area of the Evangelical Hymnody these later editions had been preceded, and probably influenced, by another hymn book of greater importance: Psalms and Hymns for public and private worship. Collected (for the most part), and published, by Augustus Toplady, A.B., Vicar of Broad Hembury. London: printed

"An Essay on Psalmody, London, 1775, pp. 104, 105.

for E. and C. Dilly, 1776. "It ought," Toplady said, "to be the best that has yet appeared, considering the great number of volumes (no fewer than between forty and fifty), which have, more or less, contributed to this Compilation."40 In its 418 Hymns many Nonconformists, beside Watts, were represented, some of them new to Church of England hymn books. The book was occasioned by Toplady's removal to London, and was made for the evening congregation he had gathered in the Huguenot Chapel in Orange Street. Toplady regarded Hymn singing as an ordinance of God, "which He designs eminently to bless at this present day", and dismissed Romaine's protest against Hymns, of the year before, with contempt.11

41

Toplady's book was more pronouncedly Calvinistic than its predecessors. Such titles as "Original Sin", "Election Unchangeable", "Electing Grace", "Efficacious Grace", "Imputed Righteousness", "Preserving Grace", and "Assurance of Faith", show that the "Five Points" were carefully illustrated. In 1770, and the years following, the Calvinistic Controversy had reached its crisis, and none had contributed more to its heat and bitterness than Toplady. The separation of the two parties was final, and his book expressed his conviction42 that the Church of England belonged on the Calvinistic side. In view of the extreme virulence of his attacks upon Wesley, Toplady's inclusion of a number of Wesleyan Hymns is noteworthy. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Toplady must have identified the authorship of these Hymns:43 and it is to be added that

* Preface.

""What absurdity is there, for which some well-meaning people have not contended?" Ibid.

"Historic Proof of the doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England (1774).

"It is quite certain that the editor of Toplady's Works could not distinguish even Toplady's Hymns from those of the Wesleys. He prints "Christ whose glory fills the skies" and "Father, I want a thankful heart", as Toplady's (vol. vi [1794], pp. 420, 428). This act of Row's is the sole basis for the charge that Toplady appropriated as his own some of Charles Wesley's Hymns (David Creamer, Methodist Hymnology, N. Y., 1848, pp. 45-47). Row in his turn is accused of

he carefully altered the text of such as he used.** And here, for the first time in a hymn book, "Rock of Ages" and "Jesu, Lover of my soul", stand side by side.

Even more unexpected, in view of the history of the Evangelical Party, is the aesthetic motive in Toplady's book. "God," so the preface opens, "is the God of Truth, of Holiness, and of Elegance. Whoever, therefore, has the honor to compose, or to compile, anything that may constitute a part of his worship, should keep those three particulars, constantly, in view." If only these quaint words could have been taken to heart by the Evangelical Party, Toplady's hymn book would not only have put into circulation the greatest English Hymn, but would have prevented that perverse ignoring of the aesthetic side of human nature which proved so serious a barrier to the spread of evangelical religion, and palliated the excesses of the Oxford Revival in the century following.

Toplady did not live to reprint his hymn book. A second edition, somewhat modified, appeared in 1787, edited by his friend Walter Row. For this there continued a demand. sufficient to keep it in print during the first quarter of the XIXth century.

Toplady included only six of his own Hymns45 in his Psalms and Hymns, though he had been a Hymn writer from his youth.46 The larger number of his Hymns appeared at Dublin in 1759 as Poems on Sacred Subjects, and portray the stress of thought and feeling that accompanied his transition to Calvinistic views. Long afterward he printed 26 Hymns in The Gospel Magazine, and five

printing some of Toplady's Hymns as his own (Gadsby, Hymn Writers, 4th ed., 1870, p. 157).

44

E.g. in "Blow ye the trumpet, blow", the Wesleyan "The all-atoning Lamb" becomes "The sin-atoning Lamb".

45

They were "Holy Ghost, dispel our sadness"; "A debtor to Mercy alone"; "Thou fountain of bliss"; "Rock of Ages"; "What tho' my frail eye-lids refuse"; and "How happy are we".

See Wright, Augustus M. Toplady, p. 23.

"In 1771, 1772, 1774, 1776. "Rock of Ages" appeared in March, 1776. There is a complete list in Wright, p. 100. The Gospel Maga