What Will Be Your Song?
by Rev. Augustus Toplady

What do you think your song will be when you come to heaven?  Blessed be God, that He gave me free-will; and blessed be my own dear self, that I made good use of it? O no, no! Such a song as that was never heard in heaven yet, nor ever will, while God is God and heaven is heaven.  Look into the book of Revelation, and there you will find the employ of the  blessed, and the strains which they sing.  They cast their crowns before the throne saying, “Thou art worthy, for Thou wast slain, and has redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 4:10).   There is discriminating grace for you!  “Thou hast redeemed us out of every kindred,” that is, from the rest of mankind.  Is not this particular election and limited redemption?
            The church below may be liable to err, and if any visible church upon earth pretends to be infallible, the very pretension itself demonstrates that she is not so.  But there is a church which I will venture to pronounce infallible.  And what church is that?  The church of the glorified, who shine as stars at God’s right hand.  And, upon the infallible testimony of that infallible church, a testimony recorded in the infallible pages of inspiration, I will venture to assert that not one grain of Arminianism ever attended a saint to heaven.  If those of God’s people, who are in the bonds of that iniquity, are not explicitly converted from it while they live and converse among men; yet do they leave it all behind them in the Jordan (the river of death) when they go through.  They may be compared to Paul, when he went from Jerusalem to Damascus, and the grace of God struck him down; he fell a free-willer; but he rose a free-gracer.  So however the rust of  self righteous pride (and a cursed rust it is; may God’s Spirit file it off from all our souls), however that rust may adhere to us at present, yet when we come to stand before the throne, and before the Lamb, it will be done away, and we shall sing in one full, everlasting chorus, with elect angels and elect men, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us.”

The Great Difference   
by Rev. Augustus Toplady

            Every religion except one puts upon you doing something in order to recommend yourself to God.  It is only the religion in Christ (which runs counter to all the rest by affirming that we are saved and called with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to the Father’s own purpose and grace) which was not sold to us on certain conditions to be fulfilled by ourselves, but was given to us in Christ before the world began.  It was long ago remarked by a good man that “It is the business of all false religion to patch up a righteousness in which the sinner is to stand before God.  But it is the business of the glorious Gospel to bring near to us, by the hand of the Holy Spirit, a righteousness ready wrought, a robe of perfection ready made, wherein God’s people, to all the purposes of justification and happiness, stand perfect and without fault before the throne.
            Try me, O God and search the ground of my heart; prove me and examine my thoughts.  Look well if there be any wickedness in me, any root of bitterness undiscovered; and lead me in the way everlasting.  Show me the true state of my soul.  Bring me out from every false refuge.  Strip off every deceitful covering, every covering that is not of Thy Spirit.  Forbid that the anchor of my hope should be cast, or the house of my dependence built, on any but Christ, the Rock of Ages.  Forbid that I should rest short of my dependence built, on any but Christ, the Rock of Ages.  Forbid that I should rest short of that repentance which is Thy gift, and is connected with life eternal: and forbid, O forbid, that I should that I should sit down without aspiring to that conformity unto Thee in righteousness and true holiness, abstracted from which repentance is false and faith is dead.  

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