Introduction

Biography

Madan was edu­cat­ed at Christ Church, Ox­ford. Though he planned a ca­reer in law, he con­vert­ed af­ter hear­ing a ser­mon by John Wes­ley, Pre­pare to Meet Thy God:

Madan, who was a cou­sin to the po­et Cow­per, was a young law­yer of con­sid­er­a­ble wealth.

One day he was at a cof­fee-house in Lon­don with some com­pan­ions, who, hear­ing that John Wes­ley was preach­ing close at hand, sent Ma­dan to hear him in or­der that he might mi­mic the great preach­er on his re­turn.

But Ma­dan re­turned in a ve­ry dif­fer­ent frame of mind from what had been an­ti­ci­pat­ed, for on be­ing asked if he had ‘tak­en off the old Met­ho­dist,’ he re­plied, ‘No, gen­tle­men, but he has tak­en me off.’ Soon af­ter he left the law for the Church.

Lightwood, p. 183

After some dif­fi­cul­ties, Ma­dan took Ho­ly Ord­ers, and sub­se­quent­ly found­ed and be­came chap­lain of the Lock Hos­pi­tal, Hyde Park Cor­ner, Lon­don. He was a po­pu­lar preach­er, and had a con­sid­er­a­ble re­pu­ta­tion as a com­pos­er.

Works

Madan stopped preach­ing af­ter pub­li­ca­tion of his work The­ly­phtho­ra, which ad­vo­cat­ed the prac­tice of po­ly­ga­my.

His oth­er works in­clude:

• A Com­ment­a­ry on the Ar­ti­cles of the Church of Eng­land
• A Col­lect­ion of Psalms and Hymns Ex­tract­ed from Va­ri­ous Au­thors, 1760