Matthew Bridges (14 July 1800 – 6 October 1894) was a British-Canadian hymnodist.Matthew Bridges' career as an author began with his poem Jerusalem Regained at the age of 25 in 1825. Although in his early life Bridges (who was raised in a Church of England environment) was sceptical of Roman Catholicism as evidenced by his 1828 book The Roman Empire Under Constantine the Great, the influence of John Henry Cardinal Newman led him to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1848 at the age of 48, a faith to which he adhered for the remaining four-and-a-half decades of his life.