In 1746, fourteen years before the Reverend Martin Madan revised and corrected the text and images for his more than 800 page version of the Book of Martyrs, he founded the London Lock Hospital. London Lock was the first voluntary hospital that treated venereal disease.1
Shortly after Madan founded the Lock Hospital, the institution opened a new building and it became known as The Female Hospital. He then began to hold worship services in areas of the hospital that afforded him the ability to preach as well as to lead a congregation in the singing of hymns, but soon it became crowded, so he set out to build a chapel. With donations from wealthy patrons he was able to build a chapel that seated up to eight hundred people.2 This may not seem large compared with today’s mega-churches but it’s still a very large fellowship and it was one of the largest of his day. The wonderful thing about Madan’s chapel was that it received enough in tithes to become a strong source of support for the hospital.3 It was there that the singing of hymns first took hold as part of Christian worship.4
The members of Lock Chapel sang from a hymnal that Madan, himself, had published. He published the hymnal as a benefit to future generations as well as to raise money for the hospital.5 From the Chapel at the Lock, hymn singing spread quickly throughout the English speaking world with Madan’s hymnal the standard. His mastery of musical worship brought thousands to the Chapel at the Lock and his hymns have brought many more thousands to a saving knowledge of our Lord.6
In less than thirty short years from the first printing of Madan’s hymnal, fully two thirds of the hymns sung, even in the parishes of the Church of England, had been lifted; word for word, note for note, from Madan’s own hymnal. Madan’s hymnal had in fact become the core of the Church of England’s hymnal.7 The Baptists’ hymnal came out twenty five years after Madan’s.8
The hymnal that he published was called A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes Never Published Before, the proceeds from which were for the benefit of the Lock Hospital.
Madan held the position of Chaplain at the Lock till the day he died. This was partly due to the fact that he eclipsed all of his contemporaries in promoting, as well as defending, the faith. It was Madan who defended Whitefield and the Methodists against the vicious satire of playwright, Samuel Foote, in 1760, (See his Exhortatory Address to the Brethren in the Faith of Christ at the back of this book) so it was not surprising that he continued to defend the faith, and biblical morality, till the day he went to be with the Lord.”9
Four years after the publication of this book, Madan excoriated another group of rascals, the judges of England, for their inconsistency in rendering justice. In his seminal work, Thoughts on Executive Justice, he outlined the need for sure and swift punishment of criminals. After his death he was falsely accused of having favored hanging for theft, but he stated in the very book that they quoted out of context against him, that he agreed with the maxim that ‘a less punishment, which is certain, will do more good than a greater [punishment], which is uncertain.’10
After another two years Madan defended the faith against Unitarian, Joseph Priestly in his Letters to Joseph Priestley. Another two years and Madan published his translation of Juvenal and Persius from Latin to English with copious explanatory notes. Today it remains unmatched in thoroughness.11
On occasion Madan still preached at the Lock Chapel and yet he still found time to write dozens of letters excoriating those who would gamble on the horse races.12
Despite all these accomplishments, not to mention his many published sermons, Christian historians have failed to chronicle his ministry in their accounts of the great evangelists of the Eighteenth Century, not to mention the great legal minds of the Eighteenth Century.
I will attempt to correct that deficiency here and in future writings, a deficiency which has left an important part of Church history unrecorded; the transition from singing Psalms to singing hymns. And it was that transition that the Lord used to spark the great revivals of the hundred years that followed Madan’s ministry.
Prior to Martin Madan’s successful promotion of hymn singing, there were only random cases of hymn singing. A church here, or a church there would allow hymn singing, and Christians at non-church venues as well as at dissenting churches sang hymns. However, it took the success of the Reverend Martin Madan’s chapel and its music to make it acceptable. The new hymn singing combined biblical concepts with calls to repentance into a moving form of worship. The hymn provides a way for biblical concepts to be presented in poetry set to music. Many lost souls have been deaf to all other forms of preaching, but have been converted by the hearing of a single hymn.
As you read Madan’s books that I’ve republished and made available here, may you be blessed in knowing that their author was the man who polished some of the most famous words in today’s hymnals, the man who composed and arranged the music behind many of those hymns, and the man who cared for and counseled the cast aside women of his time; Martin Madan, the Father of the Evangelical Hymnal.
Over time I will add to this biography of Madan.
The preceding About Martin Madan section as well as the following footnotes are used with permission, having been gleaned from Prince of Sumba, Husband to Many Wives, Chapter 12 – Martin Madan, A Memory of Love by Don Milton – Copyright © 2009 All Rights Reserved
1. “The first special hospital was the Lock Hospital near Hyde Park Corner, founded in 1746 by Martin Madan, who became its first chaplain.”
A History of English Philanthropy
by Benjamin Kirkman Gray
London – P.S. King & Son, Orchard House, Westminster – 1905
The following is an account of some of the types of patients that could be found at the Lock Hospital.
“There are merit-mongers, among the most abandoned sinners. Two women were, some time since, admitted into the Lock Hospital, in order to be cured of a very criminal disease. Mr. Madan, who visited them during their confinement, laboured to convince them of their sin and spiritual danger, ‘Truly,’ said one of them, ‘I am by no means so bad as some of my profession are : for I never picked any man’s pocket, in my life.’ The other said, ‘I cannot affirm that I never picked a man’s pocket; but I have this in my favour, that I never admitted any man in my company, on a Sunday, until after nine at night.’
The Works of Augustus M. Toplady page 168.
You will remember Toplady as the writer of that famous hymn, Rock of Ages. He was a very close friend and admirer of the Reverend Martin Madan, having also preached at the Lock Chapel. Good News from Heaven; or, the Gospel a Joyful Sound. At the Lock Chapel, near Hyde Park Corner, June 19, 1774. By the Reverend Augustus Toplady.
Recorded on page 375 of The Monthly Review Volume 52 1775
Madan wrote a tract concerning the sequence of events that led to the conversion of one such prostitute. Despite her conversion and new way of living, she soon died of the illnesses she acquired as a prostitute. This is chronicled in: A Remarkable and surprising account of the abandoned life, happy conversion, and comfortable death of Fanny Sidney, a young gentlewoman, who died in London in April, 1763, aged 26 years. By the Reverend Martin Madan
2. “The Lock Chapel was (officially) opened March 28, 1762” but the Reverend Martin Madan conducted services prior to that in other areas of the institution that afforded him the ability to preach as well as to lead the congregation in the singing of hymns.
Dictionary of National Biography – Edited by Sidney Lee – McMillan and Co.1893 – Page 288
Through Martin’s exertions a new chapel, capable of seating 800 persons, was erected in the garden of the hospital, he himself contributing 100 pounds.[100 pounds converts to $20,000 in today’s U.S. dollars. University of Michigan conversion table.] It was opened on March 28, 1762 and by 1765 was entirely free of debt.
The Madan Family and Maddens in Ireland and England By Falconer Madan 1933 – Page 112
3. “In the case of the Lock Hospital, the musical movement coincided with the Evangelical. Its chapel was used not only by its inmates, but by a strongly contrasting West End Evangelical congregation who rented sittings.”
These rented pews helped pay for the expenses of the hospital.
The Princeton Theological Review – Volume XII – 1914
The Princeton University Press – Princeton, N.J. – Page 87
4. “He (William Romaine) held the extreme Calvinistic position as to the exclusive use of inspired words in Praise, and was able to impose his views upon his own congregation. But he could not stay the rising tide of Hymn singing or make a breach between the Gospel and the Hymns of the Revival. In Martin Madan the new Hymn singing found an effective sponsor. The humorous and sturdy John Berridge was as early on the field as Madan, but less effective.”
The Princeton Theological Review – Volume XII – 1914
The Princeton University Press – Princeton, N.J. – Page 73,74
5. In the preface to the Hymnal that the Reverend Martin Madan published, “The Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes sung at the Chapel of the Lock Hospital” Mr. Madan writes:
“I have at last, with no small care and trouble, completed this Book of Tunes for the use of the Chapel; and as the publication of them may be of service to the Charity, I must desire your acceptance of the Entire Copy, hoping that, by the sale of this Music, some addition may be made to your fund for maintaining and promoting the charitable work which you have undertaken.”
6. The Church of England’s hymnal began with Martin Madan’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1760).
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge by Johann Jakob Herzog, Philip Schaff, and others. Copyright 1909
7. In 1788, the publisher of the fifth edition of the Church of England hymnal, “appropriated fully two thirds of the contents of Madan’s Collection.”
The Princeton Theological Review – Volume XII – 1914
The Princeton University Press – Princeton, N.J. – Page 76
8. The first Baptist hymn-book was Rippon’s (1787).
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge by Johann Jakob Herzog, Philip Schaff, and others. Copyright 1909
9. It was Martin Madan who defended Whitefield and the Methodists against the vicious satire of playwright, Samuel Foote in his Exhortatory address to the brethren in the faith of Christ published in 1760
10. Thoughts on Executive Justice with respect to our Criminal Laws Published in 1785 – Page 63
11. A New and Literal Translation of Juvenal and Persius; with Copious Explanatory Notes, by which these difficult satirists are rendered easy and familiar to the reader. In Two Volumes.
Thelyphthora Volume One Now on Amazon
