07/09/2023
Against the view that exclusive psalmody is a post-Puritan invention of the Scottish presbyterians (emphasis mine):
"If the Scriptural psalms, hymns [and spiritual songs] are not the very Psalms [of David themselves], which we ought to sing as the New Testament requires (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:15), and as the Old Testament enjoins on the sabbath days under the New Testament (Psalm 95:1-2, etc), then we have no psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to sing, which we can comfortably and safely acquiesce in, as fully acceptable to God - and so the apostle requires of us an impossibility. For,
1. Where except in Scripture can we find such things that we can say are, in the apostle's sense, "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs"? How, or by what art, shall we know and distinguish psalms from hymns - and both from spiritual songs - unless we [refer] to the titles of Scripture-psalms, and there they are clearly and expressly distinguished. But besides Scripture-psalms, etc., neither Old nor New Testament, nor any light of reason, does lead us thus to distinguish of any other poetical composures?
2. How shall the Church and people of God come by any other psalms, etc., wherewith they may sing to the Lord, when they reject and cast off singing of Scripture-psalms? Either we must have them by extraordinary or ordinary gift.
[1] Not by extraordinary gift, enabling men to utter psalms suddenly, ex tempore, by extraordinary inspiration. For experience tells us there is no such gift in any church on earth. Indeed, there was once such a gift in that primitive apostolic church of Corinth (1 Corinthians 14:25 with verses 15-16), at the first planting of the gospel among the Gentiles, and they sung psalms in a strange language, filling the heathen with admiration, etc., but since the gospel is received, these and other extraordinary gifts have ceased. If any that pretend to such gifts (who are not learned) can suddenly utter psalms etc. in strange languages, it would much convince us that such extraordinary gifts are not abolished.
[2] Not by ordinary gift, enabling men to prepare and compose set forms of psalms, hymns [and spiritual songs] for the church's use from time to time. For then Christ would have ordained some officer in the church to have attended [to] this work, as he hath appointed ministers to attend the ministry of the Word and prayer, etc.; deacons to take care of the poor, etc. (Acts 6:4-6, Ephesians 4:11-13), or [as Mr. John Cotton saith in his Of Singing Psalms],
"he would have inspired some member of the church or other with a spirit of psalmistry for framing psalms suitable to the church's necessities and conditions from sabbath to sabbath."
But we have no such footstep of either of these in Scripture or experience.
3. As for those poems, which both for matter and form are merely of human invention and composition, be they never so exquisitely framed, yet are they not to be compared with Scripture-psalms, hymns, [and spiritual songs]. For at best, these are but human and fallible, liable to much frailty, infirmity, error and vanity, and therefore the heart of a Christian can never fully acquiesce in them as most acceptable to God. And therefore to substitute those human infirm fallible composures instead of the divine, infallible, and perfect Scripture-psalms, [hymns, and spiritual songs] is abominably to set up and prefer vanity before verity, and man's inventions before God's institutions."
Francis Roberts, The Key of the Bible, 1675
