A27939:2879
Mr. Richard Baxter's paraphrase on the Psalms of David in metre with other hymns…
Mr. Richard Baxter's paraphrase on the Psalms of David in metre with other hymns / left fitted for the press by his own hand.
London: printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1692
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Why do the Rebel-Nations rage, And hatch a vain design? The Kings of earth do set themselves, And Rulers do combine.
The reason why I so-ordered them, is, 1. Because Nature, weary of the same, is recreated with variety of Tunes: And some are more for one, and some for another. 2. Because when brevity causeth obscurity, the additional words are seen by them that use the Books, as explicatory of the rest, when they be not spoken: And the great difference of the Letters makes it no stop to the Readers. Though this was never done by any other that I know of, and though it sometime make the Verse more rough, I hope the benefit will compensate all this.
Note, That some few select Psalms, most fitted to mens ordinary state, Humbling, Deprecatory, Supplicatory, or Gratulatory and Laudatory, should by most be learnt without Book, to be ready night and day, as various Occasions make them useful.
And times of Calamity, Danger, Oppression, and Persecution, will render men capable of a sensible understanding of the greatest part of the Psalms, otherwise hardly understood; which aggravate the furious Rage, Malignity, Violence, Bloodiness, and Diabolical Nature, Designs, and Attempts of the wicked enemies of Truth, Piety, and Holy Peace and teach us to fly to God only for help from these wicked and unreasonable men.