Mr. Richard Baxter's paraphrase on the Psalms of David in metre with other hymns…

§ 5. Quest. But are not the Psalms sufficiently by Translation and Metre, already fitted to the Churches use? What need any more help of yours?

Answ. I am not so vain as to expect that my Version should be of public Church-use: Others have done well in several respects; I delight to read them, and love and honour all the Authors. I wrote for my own use, not intending any Publication, and that in my Restraint, when my soul's great Concerns made it my chief and necessary Employment: When it was my interest and daily work to speak to God. And I found the Psalms so fitted to my use, as if they had been purposely made for me. When I used not to sleep one minute is many Nights, through pain and disturbance, these Psalms were my recreation: And when Meditations of the same things still grow customary and dull, Psalms, especially of Praise, revived and exhilarated my Soul, both Night and Day. And we are bound while we we have time to do good to all men, and ⟨image 8⟩Grace as well as Nature is communicative: And Charity to Souls is more excellent than to Bodies. I have no hope of reaching the Seraphic strain of Mr. George Sandys, (especially on Job.) But he hath not fitted his Metres to the usual Tunes, so that to the Vulgar they are almost useless. Bishop King's are very good, but the unusual-way of making the Rhyme of the next Verse meet, maketh it by disuse unpleasant to the most. Mr. White's, the Scots, and Mr. Row's his Second, are an excellent Translation of the Hebrew Text: But the ear desireth greater melody, than their strict Versions will allow. Mr. William Barton hath done excellently, of whom I have made much use: But his great labour for Rhymes hath made it (though more excellent to some, yet) less grave, and less taking to many others. Mr. Woodford's, and Sandy's, and Patrick's, and Davision's, and some others, that have taken a larger Paraphrastical liberty than I have done, are much more pleasant, and useful to many. But when I perused all these and others for my own daily devotion and delight, I found none of them that wholly answered my expectations. I could not rest in the unpleasant harshness of the strictest Versions; seeing Psalms lose their ends that lose ⟨image 9⟩