ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF PSALMODY. of less proper sense be put in the room of it : Hereby some of the chief beauties and excellencies of David's poetry will be omitted and lost, which if not revived again, or recompensed by some lively or pathetic expression in the English; will necessarily debase the divine sung into dulness and contempt : And hereby also it becomes so far different from the inspired words in the original languages, that it is very hard for any man to say, that the version of Hopkins and Sternhold, the New - England or the Scotch psalms, are in a strict sense the word of God. Those persons therefore that will allow nothing to be sung but the words of inspiration or scripture ought to learn the Hebrew music, and sing in the Jewish language ; or at least I can find no congrega- tion with which they can heartily join according to their own principles, but the congregation of Choristers in cathedral churches, who are the only Levites " that sing praise unto the Lord with the words of David and Assph the seer ; 2 Citron. xxix. 30. Secondly, Another reason why the psalms ought not to be translated for singing just in the same manner as they are for reading, is this, that the design of these two duties is very dif- ferent : By reading we learn what God speaks to us in his word ; but when we sing, especially unto God, our chief design is, or should be, to speak our own hearts and our words to God. By reading we are instructed what have been the dealings of God with men in all ages, and how their hearts have been exercised in their wanderings from God, and temptations, or in their re- turns and breathings towards God again ; but songs are gene- rally expressions of our own experiences, or of his glories ; we acquaint him what sense we have of his greatness and goodness, and that chiefly in those instances which leave some relation to us : We breathe out our souls toward hire, and make our ad- dresses of praise and acknowledgment to him.. Though I will not assert it unlawful to sing to God the worlls of other men which we have no conoern in, and which are very contrary to our circumstances and the frame of our spirits ; yet it must be confest abundantly more proper, when we address God in a song, to use such words as we can for the most part assume as our own : I own that it is not always necessary our songs should be direct addresses to God ; some of them may be mere meditations of the history of divine providences, or the experiences of former saints ; but even then if those providences or experiences cannot be assu- med by us as parallel to our own, nor spoken in our own "names, yet still there ought to he senne turns of expression that may make it look at least like our own present meditation, and that may represent it as a history which we ourselves are at that time recollecting. I know not one instance in scripture, of any later saint singing any'part of a composure of former ages, that is not
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