“I wait your directions where to send you the paper you left with me, and hope it will not be long, for it will give me double satisfaction to hear of your welfare, propria manu. Mrs. Newton concurs with me in tendering our sincerest respects, and requesting a remembrance in your prayers, and a share in your correspondence. I am, with respect and affection, reverend sir, your obliged friend and servant,
“John Newton.”[340]
Six years after this, Mr. Newton, through the interest of Lord Dartmouth, obtained ordination, and the curacy at Olney, where, from 1764 to 1779, lived in the closest friendship with the poet Cowper and the Olney circle. He then removed to the rectory of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, where he continued until his death in 1807. Like Berridge, he wrote his own epitaph, which was as follows:—
“John Newton, clerk: once an infidel and a libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy, near sixteen years at Olney, in Bucks, and twenty-eight years in this church.”[341]
In the same year, 1758, Wesley entered into correspondence with another man of distinguished talent, who afterwards became the bitterest opponent he ever had.
Augustus Montague Toplady was the son of a major in the army, and was born at Farnham, in Surrey, in the year 1740. He received the rudiments of his education at Westminster school; and thence went, with his widowed mother, to Ireland, to pursue claims to an estate which belonged to her in that island. Here, a little before he was sixteen years of age, he heard James Morris, one of Wesley’s itinerants, preach in a barn at Codymain, and was converted. Soon after, he entered Trinity college, Dublin; and wrote to Wesley as follows.
“Dublin, September 13, 1758.
“Reverend Sir,—I thank you for your satisfactory letter; particularly for your kind caution against trifling company. I do not visit three persons in the college, except one or two of the fellows. It is indeed Sodom epitomized; for I do not believe there is one that fears God in it.
“Your remarks on Mr. Hervey’s style are too just; and I think a writer would be much to blame for imitating it; or indeed the style of any other; for if he has abilities of his own, he ought to use them; if he has not, he would be inexcusable for writing at all. I believe Mr. Hervey’s mentioning the active, exclusive from the passive, obedience of Christ, is rather a casual than intentional omission; but an author cannot be too careful how he expresses himself on a point of so much importance. I have long been convinced, that self righteousness and antinomianism are equally pernicious; and that to insist on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, as alone requisite to salvation, is only strewing the way to hell with flowers. I have myself known some make shipwreck of faith, and love, and a good conscience, on this specious quicksand.
“My heart’s desire, and prayer is, that Christ would grant to keep me close to Him, with meek, simple, steady love. I think, of late, the studies I am unavoidably engaged in have done me some harm; I mean have abated that fervency with which I used to approach the throne of grace; and this, by insensible degrees. My chariot wheels have drove heavily for a month past; but I have reason to hope I am recovering my usual joy. I can attribute its declension to nothing else but assiduous application to my college business; which prevents my attending the preaching so often as I would. I depend on your candour to excuse this trouble given you, by, reverend sir, your most dutiful, humble servant,