Acknowledgments

In expressing my grateful thanks to the particular people mentioned below, I am very much aware of others who in different ways have assisted me in completing this work, written in such a brief space of time.

I thank my wife Elizabeth for her constant patience and encouragement as well as her diligence in locating some of the finer detail.

As well, I am indebted to Irene Bowser who has painstakingly typed the manuscript, Elizabeth Riddle (R.T.C. Librarian) who assisted in my initial research, and Professor Henk De Waard who has offered many helpful suggestions. Donald Prout ("D.P.") kindly forwarded books and other information that have been invaluable in my research.

My congregation at Coppards Road has upheld me in many ways for which I am very thankful.
A special word of appreciation is also due to Rev. Edwin Lee who has shouldered some of my preaching responsibilities recently and who has so graciously contributed the Foreword.

Finally I express my sincere gratitude to the Faculty of the Reformed Theological College, Geelong, for affording me this opportunity to complete my B.D. studies.

Foreword

John Cromarty is to be congratulated not only for the thorough way he has carried out his project, 'Grace in Affliction', but for the subject he has chosen. It is fascinating. The poet Cowper has been the object of much attention in the two centuries since his death. A man of rare talent not just in poetry but in every form of literary expression, he excelled in prose writing and was an exceptional letter writer. In addition, he was an outstanding conversationalist. His excellence as a poet is commended, in that readings from his poetry appear to have been an accepted practice in polite society. In Jane Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility, his poems are requested by Marianne Dashwood as part of the evening entertainment. She is disappointed that Edward Ferris reads them with so little feeling.

I owe a debt to Cowper's sacred poetry that I can never forget. As a young man who had newly experienced Divine grace, I was in a very stressful situation. I knew little of the Bible. I was bereft of Christian companions of a living faith to whom I could go for advice. My comfort and uplift came from a verse of one of his hymns I had learned when a boy. It came powerfully into my mind:

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread,
Are big with mercy and shall break,
In blessings on your head.

It was just what I needed.

In his thesis, John informs us of Cowper's Christianity and his Reformed understanding of Christianity. He exposes the gross misrepresentations of Calvinism by some of Cowper's biographers and refutes a common notion that the cause of Cowper's mental disorders can be laid at the door of his Calvinism and the influence of John Newton. He establishes the poet's theology from an examination of some of his hymns and shows that Cowper's mental sickness had nothing to do with his beliefs but was constitutional.

It is obvious from his informative thesis that John has a great appreciation of Cowper's hymns and theology and a great sympathy for his sufferings.

Edwin Lee M.A.