Chapter 5 – The Doctrines of Grace

We shall consider a selection of Cowper’s verse under the familiar Five Points of Calvinism. Reference is often made to these Five Points by use of the acronym TULIP.

(i)                Total Depravity

By this is meant that no human faculty is free of sin’s blighting effects.  Our iniquities have separated us from God and have rendered us wholly incapable of any initiative in salvation (cf. Romans 3:10-20; Romans 8:7, 8; I Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 2:1-3).

When Martin Madan spoke the gospel to Cowper prior to his admission to Dr Cotton’s Asylum, Cowper informs us,

He spoke of original sin, and the corruption of every man born into the world, whereby everyone is a child of wrath.  I perceived something like hope dawning in my heart.  This doctrine set me more on a level with the rest of mankind, and made my condition appear less desperate.[1] 

From his hymns we find the following expressions,

I hate the sins that made thee mourn
And drove thee from my Breast. (Hymn 1)

Deep wounded souls to thee repair
And, Saviour we are such. (Hymn 3)

No drop remains of all the curse,

For wretches who deserv’d the whole. (Hymn 5)

My God how perfect are thy ways!
But mine polluted are; (Hymn 11)

This heart a fountain of vile thoughts
How does it overflow? (Hymn 11)

I deliver’d thee when bound, (Hymn 18)

Fierce passions discompose the mind,
As tempests vex the sea. (Hymn 19)

Sin has undone our wretched race. (Hymn 23)

I feel, alas! That I am dead
In trespasses and sins. (Hymn 32)

Cowper speaks of ‘barren soil’ (Hymn 46), ‘bondage and distress’ (Hymn 55) and tells us, ‘Sin enslav’d me many years’ (Hymn 56).

Our utter inability to perform any saving good is also established in Cowper’s The Progress of Error where we read that the serpent so entwines error around human hearts ‘that not a glimpse of genuine light pervades’.[2]

John Murray reminds us that God’s grace is to the ‘undeserving’ and the ‘ill-deserving’, to those whose sins have rendered them spiritually blind and destitute.[3]

This is the biblical truth that Cowper is conveying to us.  For example, the phrase from Hymn 32 (above) is found in Ephesians 2:1.  Even those who disagree with Cowper are forced to acknowledge that what he is declaring concerning sin and its damning effects is biblical teaching.

Yet Routley overstates the case when he says, ‘Cowper’s profound sense of sin (is) the very heart of his Calvinism’.[4] [Emphasis mine.]  Such an understanding as Routley’s, fails to do justice to the many poems of Cowper which focus upon the grace of God that abounds over our sin (cf. Romans 5:20, 21).

(ii)          Unconditional Election

The Scriptures state that God’s sovereign choice of his people was not on the grounds of foreseen acts of faith or obedience.  Nothing at all in man drew forth his grace.  God’s electing grace is unconditional.  It is wholly ‘according to His good pleasure which he purposed in Himself’.[5] This means absolute sovereignty.  The Potter has ‘power over the clay’,[6] and this sovereign determination of God was ‘before the foundation of the world’.[7]

In many of his letters Cowper speaks of God’s unconditional election of his people, much to the consternation of Lady Hesketh and a number of ‘his influential relations who were mostly Arminian or believed that good works would save anyone’.[8]

To Cowper the source of salvation is in God alone.  He asks,

What creature could have formed the plan,

Or who fulfil it but a GOD?   (Hymn 5)

In Hymn 9 The Contrite Heart, Cowper longs to know his own election of God, and pleads for an answer.  In Hymn 14 Jehovah-Shammah, he refers to those whom the Lord calls ‘his elect’.

Ella, in mentioning Cowper’s view of election lacks precision of terminology and appears to confuse election with regeneration.  He says, ‘Election, according to Cowper, as he tells us time and time again in his verse is merely God breathing life into a “groveling worm”.’[9] Cowper, though, is speaking of regeneration when he uses this terminology.

Cowper however, understands the apostolic emphasis that God ‘chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world’.[10]

Now freely chosen in the Son,
I freely choose his ways. (Hymn 55)

And again he writes,

Oh Lord! We know thy Chosen Few,
Are fed with heav’nly Fare. (Hymn 61)

His poem The Narrow Way commences,

What thousands never knew the road!

What thousands hate it when ’tis known!

None but the chosen tribes of God,

Will seek or choose it for their own.   (Hymn 62)

To Cowper it is God’s choice of a people to be saved that makes salvation definite  (cf. John 6:37).  Hymn 62 speaks of an assured salvation for ‘the chosen tribes of God’.  Cowper’s Arminian critics, who make God’s choice subject to the exercise of man’s free will, thus placing the initiative in man, have thereby denied the first ‘two points’ which Cowper affirms strongly in his poems.

Hartley misinterprets Cowper (Hymn 21) when he writes that Cowper ‘reasserts the doctrine of election and introduces once again the baleful note of warning to those outside election’.[11] [Emphasis mine.]

This poem is based on Revelation 3:1-6, the letter to the church at Sardis.  It is not a ‘warning to those outside election’, but rather a rebuke and a warning directed to a disobedient and dying church.  Warnings are to be directed to those outside of Christ as well as to those within the Christian Church whose profession of faith may be insincere.  Hartley’s view betrays a misunderstanding of Cowper’s Calvinism.  The consequence of this misunderstanding is that ‘those outside election’, if there were such at Sardis, could in heeding the warning, repent and become elect.  Such a notion runs counter to the doctrine of election itself, which speaks of an eternal and unalterable decree of God. (cf. John 15:16; Acts 13:48; Romans 8:29,30 & 9:11,12; Ephesians 1:4,5; Revelation 13:8)

(iii)          Limited Atonement (also ‘Definite Atonement’ or ‘Particular Redemption’)

Limited atonement is the biblical teaching that Christ in his atoning work actually procured and made definite the redemption of those chosen to salvation.  It was not that Christ’s sacrifice made possible the salvation of all, but rather that in his vicarious sufferings he was securing the redemption of ‘as many as had been appointed to eternal life’, ‘the sheep’, ‘the church’.[12] It shall be shown that Cowper’s poems set forth the ‘definiteness’ of the atonement.  By contrast the Arminian speaks only in terms of ‘possibility’.

It is here that the conflict rages over the free offer of the gospel.  We have already noted Cowper’s expressions,[13] which are so similar to Newton’s supposedly ‘harsh Calvinism’. Newton wrote,

You that weary are like me,

Harken to the Gospel call;

To the ark for refuge flee,

Jesus will receive you all![14]

Newton’s Calvinism left the door of mercy wide open for sinners.  Rather than exacerbating Cowper’s affliction, the truth of Definite Atonement would have been for him a ‘balm in Gilead’.[15] Cowper’s (and Newton’s) understanding of Particular Redemption in no wise limited them in urging men and women everywhere to embrace the all-sufficient Saviour.  They saw no contradiction between a limited atonement and the free and genuine offer of the gospel to all mankind (cf. Ezekiel 33:11; Acts 17:30).

When speaking of Atonement we are referring to those great saving acts of Christ which reached their climactic expression at Calvary.  Atonement is by the shedding of blood, the blood of Christ.  It is at this point that we return to those statements of Cowper concerning the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We shall also focus briefly on the ‘limitedness’ or ‘particularity’ of the atonement.

In his poem JEHOVAH SHAMMAH, Cowper refers to the elect of God as ‘Jerusalem’.

As birds their infant brood protect,

And spread their wings to shelter them;

Thus saith the LORD to his elect,

‘So will I guard Jerusalem’.

And what then is Jerusalem

This darling object of his care?

Where is its worth in God’s esteem?

Who built it? Who inhabits there?

Jehovah founded it in blood,

The blood of his incarnate Son;

There dwell the saints, once foes to God,

The sinners whom he calls his own.   (Hymn 14)

These words are replete with Calvinistic atonement theology.  The phrases used to denote the objects of God’s salvation are particular.  There is no universalism here.  Cowper proceeds to inform us of the extent of God’s esteem for ‘his elect’, ‘this darling object of his care’, his ‘Jerusalem’.

Jehovah founded it in blood,

The blood of his incarnate Son;

Here is particular atonement, which by the purpose of God is limited in its design to ‘Jerusalem’ … the people of God.  It is accomplished by the death of his Son.

The familiar, There is a fountain filled with blood (Hymn 15) has attracted a host of critics who strongly resist the New Covenant teaching of redemption by ‘the precious blood of Jesus, as a lamb without blemish and without spot’.[16]

Johansen informs us that this hymn ‘is now less used and is being omitted from some new hymnals because of its extravagant imagery’.  He continues,

Granted the image is crude … But then the reality is crude.  Sin is not polite or polished, and the measures which God took for man’s redemption were not, in earthly terms, fit for fastidious minds to contemplate.  If this hymn is in bad taste, then Christianity itself is in bad taste.[17]

Fausset, one of Cowper’s major biographers tells us that the hymn is ‘barbarous’ and that in such a hymn Cowper is blending ‘hysteria with a sectarian idiom… All such writing has, of course, no poetic value’.[18] Hartley speaks of ‘the seemingly barbaric cult of blood sacrifice’.[19] But it is here that Cowper brings his reader face to face with the great doctrine which lay at the very heart of the evangelical preaching of his day.

Yet again the particularity of the atonement is found in this hymn in its third verse,

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood

Shall never lose its power;

Till all the ransom’d church of God

Be sav’d to sin no more.

The atoning work of Christ shall accomplish the purposes of God for his church.

(iv)          Irresistible Grace

This doctrine teaches us that the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit cannot be resisted.  Jesus said, ‘All that the Father gives me will come to me…’[20] If this grace were less than ‘irresistible’ none would be saved, for the sinner by nature is at ‘enmity’ with God.[21] The grace of God therefore must ‘abound’ over our sin which has rendered us spiritually incapacitated.[22]

Cowper sets forth this grand truth in a variety of expressions.

Divine desire, that holy flame
Thy grace creates in me. (Hymn 11)

Yet turn me, and I shall be turn’d,
Thou art the LORD my God. (Hymn 12)

I want the grace that springs from thee,

That quickens all things where it flows;

And makes a wretched thorn, like me,

Bloom as the myrtle or the rose. (Hymn 54)

Then my stubborn heart he broke,

And subdued me to his sway;

By a simple word he spoke
‘Thy sins are done away.’        (Hymn 56)

Lulled in a soft and fatal sleep,
They sin and yet rejoice;

Were they indeed the Saviour’s sheep,
Would they not hear his voice? (Hymn 59)

Hymn 13 is another in which the irresistibility of God’s special work of grace is found.

The LORD proclaims his grace abroad!

Behold, I change your hearts of stone;

Each shall renounce his idol god,

And serve, henceforth, the LORD alone.

My grace, a flowing stream, proceeds

To wash your filthiness away;

Ye shall abhor your former deeds,

And learn my statutes to obey.

My truth the great design insures,

I give myself away to you;

You shall be mine, I will be yours,

Your GOD unalterably true.

Yet not unsought, or unimplor’d,

The plenteous grace shall I confer,

No – your whole hearts shall seek the LORD,

I’ll put a praying spirit there.

From the first breath of life divine,

Down to the last expiring hour;

The gracious work shall all be mine,

Begun and ended in my pow’r.

(Note: Cowper in this hymn expresses each one of the Five Points of Calvinism.)

The use of the word ‘shall’ is significant.  That salvation is the outcome of the exercise of man’s ‘free will’ is soundly refuted by Cowper.  Even our pleadings to be saved are the initiative of a sovereign God, and activated by him.  ‘I’ll put a praying spirit there.’ (4^th verse)

Cowper reminds us that the grace that is irresistible is also prevenient,

Father of mercies we have need
Of thy preparing grace. (Hymn 16)

Here is an undiluted and balanced Calvinism.  It is the theology of Scripture which alone gives hope to the sinner, lost and ruined.  It is sovereign grace alone in its every action which opens heaven’s doors to the prodigal.

(v)          Perseverance of the Saints

The title of Ella’s biography of Cowper, Poet of Paradise tells us of the optimism that is expressed in his poems.  It is a gospel optimism based on the truth that those who are in Christ are secure and shall persevere to the end (cf. John 10:28 ‘…they shall never perish’).

While it is wholly biblical that ‘he who endures to the end shall be saved’,[23] it is equally true to assert that those who are saved shall endure.

Whilst holding firmly to the eternal security of the believer, Cowper knew of the abuses and false constructions that were attached to this comforting doctrine.  Hymn 61 is a solemn warning against presumption of grace.

Too many Lord, abuse thy grace
In this Licentious Day,

And whilst they boast they see thy face,
They turn their Own away. (Hymn 61)

In reference to this, Routley charges Cowper with having a ‘truculent’ spirit and expressing an ‘uncharitable judgment of other men’.[24] He (Routley) appears not to discern the distinction that Cowper draws between Christian liberty and licentiousness.  Cowper wants his readers to know that saving grace is known by its evidences.

Gilbert Thomas in reflecting upon Cowper’s emphasis on a sanctified lifestyle says, ‘These utterances are far indeed removed from Calvinism in any strict sense.’[25]

For Thomas, any mention of good works as the fruit of saving grace ‘contradicts the Calvinistic letter with the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount’.[26] He then makes the amazing statement that Cowper has in his heart, shifted to the Arminian position![27] Thomas’ view is that the emphasis upon holiness of life is ‘the Arminian position’, and that when Cowper speaks of sanctification he has at that moment abandoned his Calvinism.

However, perseverance is continuing in ‘holiness without which no one shall see the Lord’.[28] The end of God’s predestinating purpose is that the believer ‘be conformed to the image of his Son’.[29] This will come to its full realization and consummation in glory when ‘we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is’.[30] What Thomas does not realize is that ‘everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure’.[31] In Thomas’ view such an emphasis is foreign to Calvinism. In this regard Thomas has misunderstood Calvin’s theology.  The Reformation Creeds consistently emphasize the need for the believer to persevere in holiness.  Cowper writes,

Oh for a closer Walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame. (Hymn 1)

I hate the sins that made thee mourn
And drove thee from my Breast. (Hymn 1)

Here Cowper portrays the struggle of a person, persevering in his Christian walk and experiencing the warfare between flesh and spirit.[32] For Cowper, perseverance in the Christian life involved a constant mortifying of the flesh, a ruthless dealing with those ‘idols’ that divert the eye of faith from Christ.

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from thy throne
And worship only thee. (Hymn 1)

In a number of his poems Cowper speaks of himself as a ‘worm’ and of his life as a pathway strewn with ‘thorns’.  Hartley, in addressing this theme compares Cowper with the other Christian poets of his day.  He concludes, ‘his approach to God is more tortured’.[33] There appears to be little appreciation in Hartley of the conflict that sometimes rages in the heart of a man who, whilst being a sinner, yearns for that holiness of life which God requires.  Granted, Cowper’s affliction must never be forgotten, but Hartley fails to give due place to the Christian’s inner struggles.

Yet the theme of the glory to come is also emphasized in the poems.  Whilst suffering from hallucinations, hearing strange voices and being convinced that God had abandoned him, Cowper nevertheless expressed the conviction that a sinner once in possession of Christ and life eternal was secure.

This is the paradox that we see in Cowper.

In a time of deep despair he wrote to Newton concerning the eternal security of the believer.  Cowper speaks of the saving possession of divine truth and then concludes, ‘He who once had possession of it should never finally lose it.  I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case…but my own.’[34]

Yet here is the man who could write,

Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.

Lord, I believe thou hast prepared
(Unworthy tho’ I be)

For me a blood-bought free reward,
A golden harp for me! (Hymn 15)

We note his use of the personal pronoun.  Again he speaks of personal assurance and perseverance.

A cheerful confidence I feel,

My well-placed hopes with joy I see;

My bosom glows with heavenly zeal

To worship him who died for me.

He will not fail, he cannot faint

Salvation’s sure, and must be mine.   (Hymn 25)

There is abundant evidence that Cowper’s trust was in Christ.  His problem was his tragic affliction which on many occasions robbed him of the blessing of an assured faith.  We cannot analyse Cowper and his sense of forsakenness as we would the Christian who is at times beset by certain doubts and fears.  His was a fixation of mind which at times caused him to imagine that ‘he was living with the eternal hell of damned souls’.[35]

He constantly longed for comfort and peace.  In his more balanced moments he recognized that trials and afflictions have their purpose in the providence of God.

Trials make the promise sweet,

Trials give new life to prayer;

Trials bring me to his feet,

Lay me low and keep me there. (Hymn 36)

’Tis joy enough, my ALL in ALL,
At thy dear feet to lie;

Thou wilt not let me lower fall,
And none can higher fly. (Hymn 59)

Here is a humble, submissive Christian with the spirit of the Baptist, ‘He must increase but I must decrease.’[36] Cowper desired heaven and glory and saw the afflictions of the righteous as part of the sanctifying process.

Did I meet no trials here,

No chastisement by the way;

Might I not with reason, fear

I should prove a cast-away:   (Hymn 36)

That the last poem which he wrote was entitled The Castaway was indicative of those final ‘eight long years of misery and terror before the blessed day dawned’.[37]

The comment of Martin is pertinent at this point.

Our knowledge of God in Christ authorizes us to assert without hesitation that Cowper was mistaken in his belief in divine desertion, wherever he got it from.  We remember that saying of St John: ‘If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.’  The delusions of men do not change the reality of God’s love.  Mrs Browning has a poem called Cowper’s Grave, which does not lend itself to quotation but is full of a sympathetic understanding.  She reminds us that Christ Himself on the Cross uttered a terrible ‘orphaned cry’ and that He surely went through that experience that no such words of desolation should be used by those He came to save.  And she pictures a boy in the delirium of fever crying out for his mother, not realizing that all the time she is there beside his bed caring for him.  And when he wakes from his fever it is to find her still there.  So she sees Cowper declaring that God has forsaken him, yet waking from his fevered dream of life to find himself in His presence.[38]

Cowper’s final contribution to the Olney Hymns was his renowned poem dealing with the providence of God.  He had a premonition that he was about to be plunged into the depths of mental derangement once again.  He spoke of the ‘mysterious way’ in which God moves.  The ‘clouds’ were gathering, providence was ‘frowning’, yet even in these despairing circumstances his trust was in God who ‘works his Sovereign will’.  Though we may fail to understand, there will be a time when ‘he will make it plain’.

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform,

He plants his footsteps in the Sea,

And rides upon the Storm.

Deep in unfathomable Mines,

Of never failing Skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his Sovereign Will.

Ye fearfull Saints fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread,

Are big with Mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust him for his Grace,

Behind a frowning Providence

He hides a Smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour,

The Bud may have a bitter taste,

But wait, to Smell the flower.[39]

Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan his work in vain,

God is his own Interpreter,

And he will make it plain. (Hymn 35)

William Cowper died on Friday, 25 April, 1800.  When his elderly friend John Newton heard the news he wrote some verses in anticipation of a reunion in the land of promise.  Having spoken of his close friendship with the poet, Newton continued,

My friend, my friend! and have we met again,

Far from the home of woe, the home of men;

And hast thou taken thy glad harp once more,

Twined with far lovelier wreaths than e’er before;

And is thy strain more joyous and more loud,

While circle round thee heaven’s attentive crowd?

Oh! Let thy memory wake! I told thee so;

I told thee thus would end thy heaviest woe;

I told thee that thy God would bring thee here,

And God’s own hand would wipe away thy tear.

While I should claim a mansion by thy side,

I told thee so – for our Emmanuel died.[40]

Newton rightly said that Cowper was a burning bush who was not consumed.[41]