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TO THE

CHURCH AND CONGREGATION

OF

INDEPENDENT

PROTESTANT DISSENTERS,

ASSEMBLING IN

DUKE'S ALLEY, BOLTON.

DEAR BRETHREN AND FRIENDS,

THE God whom we serve and adore, is worthy to have the honours of his name held in eternal remembrance and reverence, and to be praised from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. He is great and condescending; just and merciful; tremendous and lovely; righteous and good; glorious in holiness; fearful in his praises; and wonderful in all his works and way. Every display of his glorious nature to his creatures, lays them under an obligation to praise and adore him who liveth for ever and ever, and in whom they live, move, and have their being: it must therefore follow, that our duty to praise him, with all the powers of soul and body, is coeval with the very first dawnings of the knowledge of his greatness and worthiness; and if there was no other reason why we should do it, that

consideration alone would sufficiently warrant our lifting up our hearts with our voices, and praising our God as long as our existence continues.

But besides that, in order fully to satisfy us as to the duty of singing the high praises of God, he has intimated it to be his sovereign pleasure; and likewise left upon record, for our instruction and imitation, many persons, who, at his command, and considering it as their great privilege, actually engaged in this delightful employment.

When he gave his statutes to Jacob and his judgments to Israel, it was one part of his enjoined worship to "praise the name of God with a song." Accordingly we find this duty urged, by the writers of the Old Testament, from the consideration of its being a command of God, and therefore acceptable as worship to him. The same is inculcated in the New Testament, which corresponds with the Old in shewing that "praise is comely;" that it is proper to "come unto Sion with songs" still; and that, both in public and private, we ought to admonish and edify each other by psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs; "singing and making melody" with grace in our hearts to the Lord. Eph. v. 19. Col. iii. 16.

High and low, rich and poor, not only should praise God, but have, where their hearts have been right with him, praised his name together in a song. When Israel saw their enemies sunk as lead into the depths of the sea, "then sang Moses and the children of Israel this

song unto the Lord" together, "the Lord has triumphed gloriously," &c. Deborah, that mother in Israel, joined her voice with that of Barak, the son of Abinoam, to praise the Lord. The son of Jesse, that royal and sweet Psalmist of Israel, did not disdain to lay aside his sceptre for his lyre, and, mingling with the thousands of his subjects and fellow-worshippers, accompany it and them with his voice-disdain, did I say? So far from that, it was his glory; and the subjects of his songs, are the themes that angels glory to sing. He yet sings, both in his writings and in heaven, how the right hand of the Lord was exalted in the overthrow of Egypt, and the deliverance of Israel: but he sings likewise of "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." His tongue is as "the pen of a ready writer," to speak the praises of King Messiah, the "Lord of Glory." His oppositions, his conquests, his triumphs, his liberality, his salvation, and his glory were the grandest subjects that ever swelled the most solemn, sublime, and affecting of the inimitable Jessæan lays. May the same subjects be often in our mouths, and always in our hearts.

Nor less were these subjects dwelt upon, and this practice attended unto, under the New Testament dispensation, and from the earliest ages of it. Jesus, the King of kings, and great Legislator of his church, when he tabernacled upon earth, sung with his chosen followers previous to his meritorious sufferings. His disciples followed the blessed practice of their great and adored

Master, after he was ascended to heaven, from whence he came. Paul and Silas did the same, even in a prison at midnight; and Paul was careful to perpetuate this noble part of divine worship, by enjoining it upon the churches to whom he writes, and through them to all others.

We learn by the testimony of a heathen of considerable credibility, I mean Pliny, that the same practice was continued by the followers of Christ in his days, that is, about the year of our Lord 100; nor was there ever a time, that I know of, from that to this, in which it was generally abandoned. Part of the subjects, indeed, dwelt upon then in singing, have been thrown out with sovereign contempt by some pretendedly very wise since those days. The Christians in the time of Pliny, he says expressly, sung hymns to Christ as though he were, or under the idea of his being GOD."* Eusebius,

66

a Christian bishop, who lived in the time of the emperor Constantine, and about the year of our Lord 300, tells us of "certain psalms and odes, wrote by the faithful brethren in the first age, which celebrate the divinity of the Christ the Word of God."+ Some persons think they see better than that now, and therefore abhor such hymns as contain that eternal truth, or any other truths founded thereupon. They are objects of pity. May the eternal Spirit open their eyes to see the glories of Jesus, and grant even unto them also salva

* Plinii Epist. lib. 10. epist. 97.

† Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. 5. c. 28.

tion by his blood. Whatever they may say or do, we will sing hymns to Christ as our God; nor need we fear being wrong in so doing, while the ransomed above sing the same eternally.

I do not mean to suggest that the following hymns are the only ones in which this truth and its concomitants are to be found. There are doubtless thousands more in the world that breathe a kindred spirit with them, and it is my sincere wish that there may be millions more of the same kind. Plenty of good witnesses will not diminish the goodness or justice of a cause.

Many, in composing such hymns, have done worthily in Israel; and their memories are blessed. The praise, particularly of Dr. Watts, is deservedly great in the churches. He shines as a sun among the stars; and as long as a just taste either for poetry or evangelic truth remains in the world, he is likely to retain the preference; and it is matter of astonishment to me that such wretched performances as Sternhold and Hopkins, the Scotch version and others, of the psalms, should ever be sung where Watts' is known, as there admits of no comparison betwixt his and theirs.

With respect both to his psalms and hymus, I profess myself to be among the number of his admirers, and cannot think the works of this kind of any individual whatever equal to his; the consequence of which is, my constant use of both the psalms and hymns: but, at the same time, I cannot help thinking some persons too strongly prejudiced to them, who, to show their attach

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