Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) was an English Congregational minister, theologian, and hymn writer who reshaped English Protestant hymnody through lyrics such as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: A 1707 hymn by Isaac Watts meditating on Christ’s crucifixion and the singer’s response. It exemplifies Watts’s practice of expressing Christian devotion in the first person.
Hymn: A song of praise or devotion, especially one used in religious worship. Watts worked within this form while arguing that Christian worship needed more than psalm paraphrases.
Southampton: A port city in southern England where Isaac Watts was born in 1674. Watts’s family and early years were shaped by this dissenting community.
Isaac Watts Sr.: An English Nonconformist schoolmaster and the father of hymn writer Isaac Watts. His dissenting commitments exposed his son to religious controversy from childhood.
Old Version: The metrical English translation of the Psalms by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, first published in the sixteenth century. Its close, often awkward psalm paraphrases were the kind of worship verse Watts sought to improve.
Joy to the World: A hymn text by Isaac Watts, published in 1719 and based on Psalm 98. Its celebration of Christ’s reign became one of Watts’s most widely sung hymns.
Psalmody: The practice of singing psalms in religious worship. Watts transformed inherited psalm-singing by bringing Christian interpretation and contemporary language to it.
Thomas Rowe: An English Independent minister and tutor who taught Isaac Watts at a dissenting academy. Rowe’s instruction helped form Watts’s education and theological outlook.
Elizabeth Singer Rowe: An English poet and devotional writer whose work appeared in the same dissenting literary culture as Watts’s. Her career offers a nearby example of women’s religious writing in Watts’s period.
New Version: A metrical English psalter by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, published in 1696. Watts’s approach offered a more explicitly Christian and expressive alternative to this popular psalter.

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