Verse of the Month
(November 2008)

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job 1:21

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

I most humbly commit my soul to the hands of Almighty God; whom I know, and have long experienced to be my ever-gracious and infinitely merciful Father. Nor have I the least doubt of my election, justification, and eternal happiness, through the riches of His everlasting and unchangeable kindness to me in Christ Jesus His co-equal Son; my only, my assured, and my all-sufficient Savior: washed in whose propitiatory blood, and clothed with whose imputed righteousness, I trust to stand perfect and sinless and complete, and do verily believe that I most certainly shall so stand , in the hour of death, and in the kingdom of heaven, and at the last judgment, and in the ultimate state of endless glory. Neither can I write this my last will without rendering the deepest, the most solemn, and the most ardent thanks, to the adorable Trinity in Unity, for their eternal, unmerited, irreversible, and inexhaustible love to me a sinner. I bless God the Father, for having written, from everlasting, my unworthy name in the Book of Life; even for appointing me to obtain salvation, through Jesus Christ my Lord. I adore God the Son, for His having vouchsafed to redeem me by His own most precious death; and for having obeyed the whole law for my justification. I admire and revere the gracious benignity (kindness) of God the Holy Ghost, who converted me, to the saving knowledge of Christ, more than two-and-twenty years ago, and whose enlightening, supporting, comforting , and sanctifying agency is, and (I doubt not) will be, my strength and my song, in the house of my earthly pilgrimage.

– Augustus Toplady, Feb. 28, 1778