Charged with the complicated load. [Pardon.] This cento in 3 stanzas of 4 lines appeared in A. M. Toplady's Psalms and Hymns, 1776, No. 323. Stanzas i. and ii. are probably Toplady's, whilst stanza iii. is from C. Wesley's "Of my transgressions numberless," from his Short Hymns, 1762, vol. ii. p. 78, slightly altered. In Spurgeon's Our Own Hymn Book, 1866, Toplady's part of the cento is altered, Wesley's remains unchanged as in Toplady, and another stanza is added. The original cento was omitted from the 2nd and later editions of Toplady. [William T. Brooke]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)