The contributions of the Calvinistic Methodists to English hymnody are of greater extent and value. Few writers of hymns had higher gifts than Toplady, author of "Rock of ages," by some esteemed the finest in the English language. He was a man of ardent temperament, enthusiastic zeal, strong convictions and great energy of character. "He had," says one of his biographers, "the courage of a lion, but his frame was brittle as glass." Between him and John Wesley there was a violent opposition of opinion, and much acrimonious controversy; but the same fervour and zeal which made him an intemperate theologian gave warmth, richness and spirituality to his hymns. In some of them, particularly those which, like "Deathless principle, arise," are meditations after the German manner, and not without direct obligation to German originals, the setting is somewhat too artificial; but his art is never inconsistent with a genuine flow of real feeling. Others (e.g. "When languor and disease invade" and "Your harps, ye trembling saints") fail to sustain to the end the beauty with which they began, and would have been better for abridgment. But in all these, and in most of his other works, there is great force and sweetness, both of thought and language, and an easy and harmonious versification. Berridge, Williams and R. Hill. Berridge, William Williams (1717-1791) and Rowland Hill, all men remarkable for eccentricity, activity and the devotion of their lives to the special work of missionary preaching, though not the authors of many good hymns, composed, or adapted from earlier compositions, some of great merit. One of Berridge, adapted from Erskine, has been already mentioned; another, adapted from Watts, is "Jesus, cast a look on me." Williams, a Welshman, who wrote "Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah," was especially an apostle of Calvinistic Methodism in his own country, and his hymns are still much used in the principality. Rowland Hill wrote the popular hymn beginning "Exalted high at God's right hand." Cowper and Newton.