Ed Walsh
Puritan Board Senior
Below is a small portion of a letter to a pastor regarding singing of the Psalms. The second paragraph is a familiar quote by Isaac Watts. But I include it for the sake of the few who may not have heard it.
Has God so changed his program of grace in these days that you believe, like Isaac Watts did, that many of the Psalms are not fit for Christian consumption. Below are Watts’ words from an introduction to an early edition of his hymns:
Has God so changed his program of grace in these days that you believe, like Isaac Watts did, that many of the Psalms are not fit for Christian consumption. Below are Watts’ words from an introduction to an early edition of his hymns:
I have long been convinc’d, that one great Occasion of the Evil arises from the Matter and Words to which we confine our Songs. Some of ’em are almost opposite to the Spirit of the Gospel: Many of them foreign to the State of the New-Testament, and widely different from the present Circumstances of Christians…Far be it from my Thoughts to lay aside the Book of Psalms in public worship…But it must be acknowledged still, that there are a thousand lines in it which were not made for a Church in our Days, to assume as its own: There are also many Deficiencies of Light and Glory, which our Lord Jesus and his Apostles have supply’d in the Writings of the New Testament…You will always find in this Paraphrase dark expressions enlighten’d, and the Levitical Ceremonies and Hebrew Forms of Speech chang’d in to the Worship of the Gospel, and explain’d in the Language of our Time and Nation…After this manner should I rejoice to see a good part of the Book of Psalms fitted for the Use of our Churches, and David converted into a Christian…
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