A47407:515
The breach repaired in God's worship, or, Singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,…
The breach repaired in God's worship, or, Singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, proved to be an holy ordinance of Jesus Christ with an answer to all objections : as also, an examination of Mr. Isaac Marlow's two papers, one called, A discourse against singing, &c., the other, An appendix : wherein his arguments and cavils are detected and refuted / by Benjamin Keach ...
London: printed for Author, 1691
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.
But certain it is, they preached by an Immediate and extraordinary Spirit or Inspiration; And so do not we, but by an ordinary Spirit from the mediate Word, and therefore must study, and are left to use what Method we think may be (as I said before) most profitable for the Edification of the People: so that although the Matter of our Sermons are God's Word, and so Divine and Sacred, yet the Form or Method, you may as well call Formal and Human, as so to call our Sacred Hymns, &c. God hath graciously owned nevertheless this form of Preaching, and daily doth, for the conversion of many Sinners; and so he doth our way of Singing, to the comforting and refreshing the Souls of many Saints. —We have matter to be sung plainly expressed, viz. the Word of Christ, in Psalms, and they are well known; and also Hymns and Spiritual ⟨p. 180⟩Songs, which are also easily known by such who are Spiritual, whether they be the Sacred Word of Christ as to the Matter of them or not, as it may be known, that the Doctrine is so which we hear preached.
As touching David's Psalms, they are formally God's Word as well as materially so: and since we are exhorted to sing Hymns and Spiritual Songs, I ask whether those Hymns and Spiritual Songs could be without a Form, either immediately, or mediately precomposed by the Spirit? and whether the Spirit of God doth not, may not assist God's Servants now in precomposed Hymns, as he did of old?
Object. But may be you will say, They are not in Metre in the Scripture, but other words are added to make them fit to be Songs, and that is humane.