N01895:60
The accomplished singer. Instructions how the piety of singing with a true devotion, may…
The accomplished singer. Instructions how the piety of singing with a true devotion, may be obtained and expressed; the glorious God after an uncommon manner glorified in it, and his people edified. : Intended for the assistance of all that would sing Psalms with grace in their hearts; but more particularly to accompany the laudable endeavours of those who are learning to sing by rule, and seeking to preserve a regular singing in the assemblies of the faithful. : [Two lines of quotation]
Boston: printed by B. Green for S. Gerrish, 1721
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.
In Singing our spiritual Songs, let us be Inquisitive after those Motions of Piety, which are discernible in the Verse now before us; and let us with a Soul flying away to GOD, for them, try whether we cannot fly with them; and strive to come at the like; and give not over the struggle, till we feel our selves come into an Holy Symphony with the Saints who had their Hearts burning within them, when they Sang these things unto the Lord. Christian, Behold a lovely Method of getting into those Heavenly Frames & strains which will assure thee of thy arriving one Day, to the same state of Blessedness, and those Everlasting Habitations, which these Favourites and Amanuenses of Heaven, thro' whom our spiritual Songs were conveyed unto us, have been renewed into. Yea, Thou art already Caught up to Paradise in them. Nor is there a Nobler Method, among all our Hermeneutic Instruments, to come at the True sense of our spiritual Songs, ⟨p. 14⟩than Affectum scriptorum Sacrorum Observare, Eumque assumere, as Dr. spener advises, or an Experimental Taste, of the PIETY which was working in the Hearts of the Writers at the Time of their Inspiration. Even an Illiterate Christian, that Lives unto GOD, and is no Stranger to the Sentiments of Piety, may in that way reach the True sense of the Lively Oracles, and (a Luther, a Gerhard, a Franckius, and all the Sons of the Orthodox and Genuine Pietism will tell us) he will have within him, an Exposition far more Valuable, than any of the Commentators, (truly Commentators!) who are Alienated from the Life of GOD, can help him to.
In Singing our spiritual Songs, let us be Inquisitive after those Motions of Piety, which are discernible in the Verse now before us; and let us with a Soul flying away to GOD, for them, try whether we cannot fly with them; and strive to come at the like; and give not over the struggle, till we feel our selves come into an Holy Symphony with the Saints who had their Hearts burning within them, when they Sang these things unto the Lord. Christian, Behold a lovely Method of getting into those Heavenly Frames & strains which will assure thee of thy arriving one Day, to the same state of Blessedness, and those Everlasting Habitations, which these Favourites and Amanuenses of Heaven, thro' whom our spiritual Songs were convey'd unto us, have been renew'd into. Yea, Thou art already Caught up to Paradise in them. Nor is there a Nobler Method, among all our Hermeneutic Instruments, to come at the True sense of our spiritual Songs, ⟨p. 14⟩