PREFACE OR, AN ENQUIRY INTO THE RIGHT WAY OF FITTING THE BOOK OF PSALMS FOR CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. THOUGH the Psalms of David are a work of' admirable and divine composure, though they contain the noblest sentiments of piety, and breathe a most exalted spirit of devotion ; yet when the best of christians attempt to sing many of them in our common translations, that spirit of devotion vanishes and is lost, the psalm dies upon their lips, and they feel scarce any thing of the holy pleasure. If I were to render the masons of it, I would give this for one of the chief, namely, that the royal psalmist here expresses his own concerns, in words exactly suited to his own thoughts, agreeable to his own personal character, and in the language of his own religion: This keeps all the springs of pious passion awake, when every line and syllable so nearly affects himself; this naturally raises, in a devout mind, a more lively and trans- porting worship. But when we who are christians sing the same lines, we express nothing but the character, the concerns, and the religion of the Jewish king, while our own circumstances, and our own religion, which are so widely different from bis, have little to do in the sacred song; and our affections want something of property or interest in the words, to awaken them at first, and to keep them lively. If this attempt of mine, through the divine blessing, become so happy as to remove this great inconvenience, and to introduce warm devotion into this part of divine worship, I shall esteem it an honourable service done to the church of Christ. It is necessary therefore that I should here inform my readers at large, what the title page expresses -in a shorter way ; and assure them, that they are not to expect in this book an exact translation of the Psalms of David : For if I had not conceived a different design from all that have gone before me in this work, I had never attempted a service so full of labour, though I must confess it has not wanted its pleasure too. In order to give a plain account of my present undertaking, I shall first represent the - methods that my predecessors have followed in their versions ; in the next place, I hope to make 'ft evident, that those methods can never at- tain the noblest and highest ends of christian psalmody; and then describe the course that I have taken, different films them all, together with some brief hints of the reasons that induced me to it. First, I will represent the methods that my predecessors have followed. I have seen above twenty versions of the Psalter, by persons of richer and meaner talentg ; aml how various soever their professions and their prefaces are, yet in -the performance they all seem to aim at this one point, namely, to make the Hebrew psalmist only speak English, and keep all his own charac- ters still. Wheresoever the psalm introduces him as a soldier or a prophet, as a shepherd ora great musician, as a king on the throne, or as the fugitive in the wilderness, the translators ever represent him in the some circumstances. Some of them lead an assembly of common Christians to worship God, as sear as possible, in those very words; and they generally agree also to per-
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