Who Was Philip Doddridge? Pastor, Teacher and Hymn Writer

Biography Preaching Hymns Church History

Philip Doddridge was an English pastor, teacher and hymn writer who lived from 1702 to 1751. For more than twenty years he led an independent congregation in Northampton and ran an academy there that trained young men for the ministry. He wrote some four hundred hymns, including "O God of Bethel, by Whose Hand" and "Hark, the Glad Sound! The Savior Comes," and a book, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, that helped bring William Wilberforce to faith. He belonged to the Dissenters, the Protestants outside the Church of England, but he was loved well beyond them for his warm, plain, Christ-centered piety.

Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to read first.

An orphan raised on Bible tiles

Doddridge was born in London on June 26, 1702. He was the last of twenty children born to his parents, and most of the others died young. His father sold oils for a living. His grandfather on his father's side had been one of the ministers forced out of the Church of England in 1662, and his mother's father was a Lutheran pastor who had fled persecution in Prague.

His mother taught him the Bible before he could read, using the blue Dutch tiles around the fireplace, each of which showed a Bible story. She died when he was eight, and his father when he was thirteen. A guardian then lost the family money, and the boy was left with almost nothing. Samuel Clarke, a Presbyterian minister in St. Albans, took him in, paid for his schooling and encouraged his call to preach. Doddridge said later that under God he owed himself and all his usefulness to Clarke.

He was offered help to study at a university if he would become a minister in the Church of England, and he was also urged toward law. He turned both down. In 1719 he entered a Dissenting academy at Kibworth in Leicestershire, under John Jennings.

Pastor and teacher in Northampton

In 1723 Doddridge became minister of the small congregation at Kibworth. Soon after, a meeting of ministers asked him to open an academy of his own. In 1729 he was called to the independent church at Castle Hill in Northampton, and the academy moved with him. He stayed there for the rest of his life.

The academy grew into one of the best known in England. Over the years some two hundred students passed through it, many of them future ministers. He taught them Hebrew and Greek, philosophy, theology and the practical work of a pastor. His notes on that last subject were printed after his death as Lectures on Preaching. They're full of short, sharp advice:

Let the blessed work of praise have a large share in your prayers.
Lectures on Preaching, Lecture XIII

The honour of God, the glory of the gospel, and good of souls are no small trust.
Lectures on Preaching, Lecture I

He was a gentle man in an age of church quarrels. He kept up friendships with Christians of many kinds, wrote to the revival preachers of his day, and was a close friend of the older hymn writer Isaac Watts.

A father's grief

In December 1730 Doddridge married Mercy Maris. They had nine children, and four lived to grow up. Their first, Elizabeth, whom they called Betsey, died in 1736, a little before her fifth birthday. Doddridge was crushed. On the day she died he wrote in his diary:

I hope God knows that I am not angry; but sorrowful he surely allows me to be.
Thoughts on Sacramental Occasions, Meditation XXIII

He preached on the Shunammite mother of 2 Kings 4, who said of her dead son, "It is well." The sermon, printed as Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children, is still one of the kindest things a grieving parent can read. It doesn't hide the pain. It points to the God who did not spare His own Son:

Did he think the Life of this Child too great a Good to grant, when he thought not Christ and Glory too precious?
Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children

What he taught

Doddridge held the Reformed faith of the Puritans who came before him, but he cared most about how the truth takes hold of the heart. He wanted people to come to Christ, give themselves to God in a real covenant, and then grow in love and holiness day by day. That's the plan of The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745), which walks a reader from carelessness to conversion and on to a mature Christian life. He dedicated it to Watts, who had urged him to write it.

His private diary of the Lord's Supper shows the same thing from the inside. He met Christ at the table again and again, and he never got over the cross:

We must have low thoughts of Christ, or we cannot have low thoughts of sin.
Thoughts on Sacramental Occasions, Meditation XII

His hymns came out of his preaching. He often wrote one to sum up a sermon, so the people could sing back what they had just heard. They weren't printed until after his death, and many are still sung.

A soldier friend

One of Doddridge's closest friends was Colonel James Gardiner, a cavalry officer who had been converted one night in 1719 by what seemed to him a vision of Christ on the cross. Gardiner was killed at the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745, during the Jacobite rising. Two years later Doddridge published The Life of Col. James Gardiner, built on Gardiner's letters and their friendship. It became one of the most widely read Christian biographies of the next hundred years.

His last voyage

Doddridge also wrote The Family Expositor, a paraphrase and commentary on the whole New Testament in several volumes. John Wesley used it when he wrote his own notes on the New Testament. But years of preaching, teaching and letter-writing wore him down. He had never been strong, and in 1751 he developed tuberculosis. At the end of September he sailed for Lisbon, hoping a warmer climate would help. He died there on October 26, 1751, at forty-nine, and was buried in the British Cemetery in Lisbon.

Why he's still read

Doddridge is still read because he joins a clear gospel to a warm heart. He wrote for ordinary people, not scholars, and he never forgot that the point of every doctrine is to bring a soul near to God. Pastors still find his rules on preaching and prayer useful, and grieving parents still find his words on the death of a child honest and comforting.

Where to start

TheWay Library has four of his books, all free to read. Start with Thoughts on Sacramental Occasions, his short diary entries from the Lord's table. If you're grieving, read Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children. For a true story, try The Life of Col. James Gardiner.

Our guide to Philip Doddridge's books describes all four, and our collection of Philip Doddridge quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find his books on the Philip Doddridge author page.