Singing of Psalms a Gospel-ordinance, or, A TreatiseSinging of Psalmes a Gospel-ordinance, or, A Treatise

2. The practise brought in by Flavianus and Diodorus, was rather some new fashion of singing Davids Psalms, then the singing of them. For as Theodoret reporteth it, they were the first that divided the Quire of Singers into two sides, and appointed one side of them to answer the other in the singing of them: and used the same at the Monuments of the dead, and that sometimes all the night long. But these inventions savoured rather of superstition, then of pure Primitive Devotion: though they wrought a good effect upon Theodosius, when Flavianus sent those Songs to be sung at his Table, to moderate his wrath against the Citizens of Antioch; ⟨p. 68⟩see Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 24. Zozomen, Hist. Eccles. lib. 7. cap. 23.

2. The practise brought in by Flavianus and Diodorus, was rather some new fashion of singing Davids Psalmes, then the singing of them. For as Theodoret reporteth it, they were the first that divided the Quire of Singers into two sides, and appointed one side of them to answer the other in the singing of them: and used the same at the Monuments of the dead, and that sometimes all the night long. But these inventions savoured rather of superstition, then of pure Primitive Devotion: though they wrought a good effect upon Theodosius, when Flavianus sent those Songs to be sung at his Table, to moderate his wrath against the Citizens of Antioch; ⟨p. 68⟩see Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 24. Zozomen, Hist. Eccles. lib. 7. cap. 23.

3. It is spoken without warrant of Antiquity, that Ambrose and Augustine took up the practise of singing Davids Psalms from Flavianus and Diodorus. For neither did they bring it in, (as was shown out of Tertullian;) nor is the slackness of some Churches in receiving an Ordinance, a just exception against the Ordinance, but rather a just reprehension of their negligence. And so much doth Augustine confess in his 119 Epistle, chap. 18. Where speaking of this practise of singing of Psalms, though it be, saith he, so useful to the stirring up of the heart in godliness, and to kindle the affection of divine reading: yet the custom of Churches is divers about it, and the most members of the African Churches, Pigriora sunt, have been more slothful in receiving it. Insomuch that the Donatists do reprehend us, that we sing soberly the divine Songs of the Prophets, whereas they inflame their drunkenness (as it were) by a Trumpet of exhortation to the singing of Psalms, composed by their own humane wit.