Augustus M. Toplady died in 1778, more than a decade before William Carey’s Enquiry was published, which is widely regarded as marking the beginning of the modern missions movement.[1]
Before the missionary structures that developed after Carey’s initiative, however, George Whitefield was, we might say, an international evangelist, a proto-missionary. Between 1738 and 1770, he made seven trips to America. In one of the last conversations Whitefield had with Toplady before sailing for the last time in 1770, he asked Toplady to join him in America. “Why do you not come out?” he said,
“You might be abundantly more useful, were you to widen your sphere, and preach at large, instead of restraining your ministry to a few parish churches.”
Toplady had no interest in travelling to America. He had suffered from ill health for most of his life, and perhaps this was the “providence” he referred to when he told Whitefield, “the same providence that bids others roll at large seems to have confirmed me to a particular orbit.”
Four years later, in 1774, he expanded on the subject of ministry at home and abroad, as he recounted in a letter to Lady Huntingdon. He opposed lay preaching but believed that the ordained ministry is providentially divided into two categories: regular and irregular.[2]
The former may be compared to sentinels, who are to keep their stations, or to watchmen, whose attention is immediately confined to their respective districts. The latter, like troops of light horse, are to carry the arms of their sovereign wherever an opening presents, or occasional exigence may require. Both these corps are useful in their distinctive departments, and in my opinion, should observe the same harmony with each other, as obtains among the stationary and planetary stars, which are fixed and erratic in the regions above us.
Toplady’s distinction between “regular” and “irregular” was likely shaped by his Anglican context, in which order and structure were important; it reminds us that the tail should not wag the dog—mission flows from the Body of Christ and feeds back into it.
Unlike Carey, Toplady did not write a missions manifesto or outline a missions strategy; however, this letter to Lady Huntingdon clearly reveals an underlying theology of mission. Here are a few observations.
- First, Toplady’s use of the term “occasional” needs some clarification. The modern use of this word is different from Toplady’s day. We should not think of it in terms of “from time to time,” or “sporadic,” but rather in terms of circumstantial or situational. Toplady means something arising from a particular circumstance or occasion.
- Toplady’s imagery picks up on the theme of the Church Militant – a dynamic, intentional, determined Church.
- Notice Toplady’s reference to the “Sovereign” under whose banner we march and his careful recognition of it in the mission of the Church.
- Each man must recognise the “providence” of God in his assignment and placement.
- Both the local church and mission work hand in “harmony.”
- The Church is to “carry” the banner of the Lord out from the home stations, recognising the “opening” and “exigence” (need or demand). The word “exigence” is a strong term, and his use of it in this context is interesting.
[1] https://www.chapellibrary.org/pdf/books/enqu.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOoqsXMuuB59riEXn9GVOiZp90rViI5w6n1ZCMXZlFW8nG45VKsaF
[2] George Lawton, Within the Rock of Ages: The Life and Work of
Augustus Montague Toplady (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1983), 78-79.