plication of ingratitude to the rest.-In testimony of all which premises, (and at the same time, utterly revoking, cancelling, annulling, and rescinding every and all other will or wills, by me heretofore made) I hereunto set my hand and seal, the day and year first above written, viz. Saturday, the twenty-eighth day of February; and in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Eight; and of the reign of his majesty, king George the Third, the eighteenth year. AUGUSTUS MONTAGUE TOPLADY. L. S. Signed, declared, and published, as and for the last will and testament of him, the said Augustus Montague Toplady, in the presence of us, who subscribe our names in the testator's presence, and at his request. JOHN BERNARD JUNTHER. From the preceding statements, the peculiarities of Mr. Toplady's character, are sufficiently obvious. They have been made on evidence, the validity of which, cannot for a moment, be questioned; and might well warrant the moral painter, to exhibit a portrait, which would be highly coloured indeed, before it could be at all overcharged. An ardent and diligent student in his youth, he was distinguished for extensive information and solid learning, in his riper years. Habits of close application, acquired in early life, continued with him till the last. Never idle, he has left behind him, such monuments of literary industry, as have not often been equalled by any, who have lived for so short a space, as not to have completed thirty-eight years. He was of those who live long in little time. His zeal for the truth, for which he was called earnestly to contend, procured him many enemies. But this same zeal for the truth, together with his affability and condescension, the kindness of his heart, and the elegance of his manners, the sanctity of his life, and the usefulness of his labours, attached to him an incomparably greater number of the best friends. Admired by them as a preacher, and beloved by them as a man, they showed the greatest veneration for his character while he lived, and for his memory after he died. From the time when it pleased God to reveal his Son in him, piety was the element in which he breathed. Eminently a man of prayer, and delighting in spiritual meditation, and other spiritual exercises, he maintained close and constant fellowship with the God of his salvation. He thus became more and more assimilated to the image, and devoted to the cause of his divine Redeemer. To exhibit the glory of his person, to extol his righteousness, and to magnify his salvation, to persuade perishing sinners to believe on him to eternal life, and to encourage fellow saints, still more, to glory in his cross, and honour all his laws, were the leading objects of all his anxious wishes, and all his fervent prayers, of all his discourses from the pulpit, and all his publications from the press. He truly spent his strength in the service of his Master. Worn out at length, he, with becoming patience, but with joyful anticipation, waited for the moment, when his Lord should call him to enter his beatific presence, and to join the society and take part in the services of an innumerable company of angels, and of all the spirits of just men made perfect. As his outward man decayed, his inward man was renewed day by day. Weak in body, but strong in spirit, his hopes brightened, and his joys increased, as he approached the verge of mortality. The earthly house of his tabernacle, as if overpowered, by the manifestations of glory made within, fell at length And then the angelic spirit, now emancipated from its prison-house, rose to the regions of immortality, there to inhabit "an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."-" Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." |