My dearly beloved, whether churches in general, or Christians in particular, wherever this appendix may come:
Singing is generally owned to be a gospel ordinance, but there is much confusion about what ought to be the substance of the song, and what manner and mode we ought to sing in. Also, knowing that it is heartily desired by many officers, and other particular members of some churches of Christ, that they could agree together to perform this ordinance of God, especially at the Lord’s Table, and Supper of the Lord, as Christ Himself, and His apostles, did; and that the churches may come to the practice of this ordinance, which for many years has been lost in many churches (as the Feast of Tabernacles was for a long time)—I mean, singing after the Lord’s Supper. This is my great design to them that do not practice it, although it is very clear that this ordinance was practiced at other times by the church in general, and saints in particular, which I hope all churches will further practice, as God shall enlighten them into it upon their diligent search.
That singing vocally and audibly has been and still is God’s ordinance is proved:
Argument I: From the command of God: “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,”[1] “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”[2]
That the apostle presses this as an ordinance is clear:
1. Because he speaks to the whole church, and as a public duty, not appropriated to any office, but as a command universally on all.
2. The apostle distinguishes this ordinance from that of preaching, or teaching doctrinally, which belongs to the officers, or occasionally to a gifted brother. For he does not say, as in other places, to “teach and admonish,” but gives us the modification of this admonition, in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs.
Argument II: As praising God is a moral duty, so singing is often linked with that moral duty which is universally obliging and perpetually binding: namely, prayer. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.”[3] That this duty may particularly be done, this proves; that it must be generally done, the former proves. So Paul and Silas join them together:[4] they hymned God, or celebrated His praises with a hymn, or, as Beza says, with singing. And Justin Martyr tells us, “In hymning they sang, and sent up praises to God.”[5]
Prayer, we all grant, is a moral duty, and is always obliging. We ought to acknowledge God the giver of all good things, in praying unto Him for them, and surely to praise God for the mercies received is as great a duty. And to sing praise to God with the heart is one of the best ways of praising God, although we do grant that God may be praised after another manner.
Argument III: This is further confirmed by Scripture pattern.
1. Christ and His apostles sung a hymn together.[6]
2. Godly princes have honored God this way, such as Hezekiah[7] and Jehoshaphat.[8]
3. Worthy governors, such as Nehemiah, took care to bless God this way.[9] So did Moses.[10]
4. The holy apostles and churches in the New Testament have honored God thus.[11]
5. Godly prophets were much in this practice. 2 Samuel 22 is a song of holy David, a little before his death, to bless God for many mercies; so Moses closes up his life with a song.[12]
6. As singing has not been too low for kings and princes, neither is it too lofty for subjects.[13]
7. Both sexes have practiced this work, women as well as men. Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, sings a song to God.[14] So did Deborah, as well as Barak.[15]
8. Primitive Christians were much in this work. Tertullian says, “When we come to a feast, we sit not down before there is prayer; and after meal is past, one comes forth with a psalm, either from the Holy Scriptures, or else some spiritual song of his own composure.
9. Eminent fathers practiced it. Basil calls singing sweet incense. Augustine was highly in commendation of this, and assures us that Ambrose and Athanasius were in agreement with him in this thing.
10. This duty is further confirmed by Scripture prophecy. Divines[16] observe that the 100th Psalm is prophetical of Christ’s kingdom, in which there will be great cause of rejoicing. And Musculus says, those watchmen shall jubilee when they consider the great joy approaching by Christ’s redemption.[17]
Argument IV: Let us further consider:
1. That singing is the music of nature, and shall not the saints sing? The valleys sing.[18] The mountains and trees are said to sing.[19]
2. Singing is the music of ordinances. Augustine reports of himself that when he came to Millain and heard the people sing, he wept for joy. Beza confesses that when he entered into the congregation and heard the people sing the 19th Psalm, he was greatly comforted. The rabbis tell us that the Jews, after the Feast of the Passover was celebrated, sung the 111th Psalm, and the five following. And Christ and His apostles sung a hymn after Supper.
3. This is the music of angels.[20] The heavenly host, when they proclaimed the birth of Christ, declared it in this raised way of singing.[21]
4. This is the music of saints, in their triumphant state, in the bride-chamber, where will be eternal hallelujahs.[22] Shall we not begin that work on earth which will be continued in glory?
Argument V: Also, it is worth our consideration:
1. That this duty has been performed in the greatest numbers.[23]
2. In the greatest straits, Paul and Silas sang in prison.[24] This may serve to rectify the judgment of some who ask the question, how they can sing when in trouble? When some persuaded Luther of the dangers of the church, and what a black cloud did hang over the church’s head, he then called for the 46th Psalm to be sung, as a charm against slavish fear. It is since called Luther’s psalm.
3. In the greatest deliverances this duty has also been performed,[25] when Israel was delivered from Pharaoh’s host.[26] And 2 Samuel 22 is a song for mercies and great deliverances. So shall the gospel church sing after a better manner when it is out of the wilderness and led into the celestial Canaan.[27]
Argument VI: Such has been the constant observation of this duty, that it has been performed in all places.
1. Moses praises God by singing in the wilderness.[28]
2. David praises God in the tabernacle.[29]
3. Solomon and Hezekiah in the temple extol Jehovah.[30]
4. Jehoshaphat, in the camp.[31]
5. Christ and His apostles, in a private room.[32]
6. Paul and Silas, in a prison.[33]
7. The early church saints, in public assemblies.[34]
Argument VII: Consider how this ordinance has been crowned:
1. With His own glorious appearance.[35]
2. Crowned with eminent miracles.[36]
3. Honored with eminent victories.[37]
Consider also:
1. This ordinance is of great benefit to the church: It is for admonition and teaching.[38]
2. It can sweeten a prison, as it did to Paul and Silas.[39]
3. It can prepare the soul for suffering; for Christ sings before He dies.[40]
4. It enlivens and exhilarates the soul in trouble.
Objection: How can a serious Christian sing, where there is a mixed multitude?
Answer: By the same rule as we may pray and hear with them; for we ought to be as pure in praying as singing. Besides, singing may be sanctified to the conviction of sinners, as well as praying and preaching are, though singing and praying properly belong to the saints and is best done by them. Yet as prayer and praises are natural duties, as well as a part of instituted worship, and all men are bound by the law of their creation to seek out God for what they want and praise Him for what they have, we dare not, when we are about that work, to shut them out and say, “Keep to yourself.”[41] For praise is the natural duty of all, the proper duty of saints, the perfect act of angels.
Question: But what may be the right mode and way of singing?
Answer: That to sing is not only meant as the inward frame of the heart, but also of the voice, is apparent:
1. Because the Word says so. They should be “addressing one another” and “admonishing one another” in “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”[42] But we cannot admonish one another by silent speakings and inward rejoicings.
2. As the apostle says, there must be melody in the heart; he also says we must sing. One contains the inward frame, the other the outward act. Sing with the voice, as well as with the heart.
3. Singing in Scripture is always distinguished from reading, praying, and speaking, and commonly signifies a modulation of the tongue, or expressing anything musically; and so it is a musical speaking. None will say, when they hear a man speak or pray, that that man is singing. This would make the greatest confusion in ordinances imaginable. Hence it is said, Christ and His disciples sung a hymn, or praised God by singing. And that Paul and Silas sung vocally and audibly is plain, for, it is said, the prisoners heard them.[43]
Objection: If singing be with the voice, why not with lute, harp, organs, and other instruments?
Answer: In the New Testament the voice and heart are only God’s instruments. The voice is still required, because it is the immediate interpreter of the heart; and though artificial instruments are laid aside from God’s worship, natural ones are not.
2. The union of heart, tongue, and voice make the spiritual way of worship under the gospel complete. We have not anything as typical now to look at as the lute and harp were in the law, as also those Old Testament ceremonies which typified Christ’s sacrifice. But when the substance came, the shadow ceased. Now, because the Spirit is more abundantly poured out, we have no need of those instruments; but the soul and body are always needed to sing forth the high praises of God.
Objection: If any has a special spiritual gift of singing in the church, it may be lawful, but we cannot allow of set forms.
Answer: Every man that preaches profitably has a set form in his head and heart how he will deliver his message; and yet that man may be said to preach by the assistance of the Spirit. Also it is lawful for a man to consider what he wants before he goes to God by prayer. For order is necessary in prayer, as well as in preaching, as Christ has directed us in the form of prayer that He taught us;[44] and yet, notwithstanding this consideration and order in his mind, he may be said to pray with the Spirit’s assistance. So in like manner it is lawful to compose a hymn, grounded on the Word of God, in a set form, and deliver it to the people, either by strength of memory, or as written, as well as deliver a sermon in a set form by notes, or by strength of memory, which is alike grounded on the Word of God.
2. Moreover, to speak of an extraordinary gift to sing in the church is the ready way to weaken the authority of the Scripture, for how did so many come to slight the Scriptures so much, but by claiming to extraordinary gifts and new revelations?
3. It is the ready way to make hypocrites and impose a deceit upon the whole church. For how easy is it for a man to compose by strength of parts an excellent hymn, and deliver it by strength of memory, and claim he is immediately inspired? How many such cheats have been in our days?
4. God never made any such promise of giving an extraordinary gift of singing, unlike prayers, supplication, and preaching. If there had been such a gift promised, it would have been made by Christ, as the gift of tongues and miracles was; and then surely the saints would have been instructed to seek for it, and such as had it would have been commanded to wait on it, as God does exhort us to wait on teaching and ruling.[45]
5. To be sure, Christ would not ordain an ordinance as consequential as singing, which most of the churches in the world must lack the use of, because of the lack of a supposed gift. That Christ has appointed this ordinance in His church, we have shown; that He never promised any extraordinary gift of singing, is clear. Therefore, we may conclude, as God ordinarily gives every Christian a spirit of prayer, so He also has ordinarily given them a gift to sing praises to God. And as many might pray better, if they used it more, so many may lack a gift of singing for lack of use.
6. As for that found in 1 Corinthians 14:26, “each one has a hymn, a lesson,” and so on, it does not concern us to expect that gift as they had, because they had a doctrine, a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation, a psalm after an extraordinary manner. Yet we say, though we have not the spirit of prayer, as the church had, to make the place shake,[46] as the effect of it; nor cannot preach extraordinarily, as Peter did to the 3000 and to the house of Cornelius; yet we say not, preaching and prayer is ceased. So though none should have an extraordinary gift to sing now, as they might have in the church of Corinth, yet the duty remains still in the church, as a standing ordinance, as well as prayer and preaching.
Objection: But what psalms must we sing? David’s, or a composure of our own from the Holy Scriptures?
Answer: As for singing the holy Psalms of holy David, as they are in meter, as long as they retain the sense and meaning of the reading Psalms, which I think they generally do, I have nothing against the thing, or those which shall do it.
But yet also I do think that we are at our liberty to compose other parts or portions of God’s Word to that end; provided our hymns are founded directly on God’s Word, these very hymns may be called the Word of God, or spiritual hymns. For, as a learned man says, it is the sense and meaning is the Word of God, whether in prose, or in meter; and he further says, we may as well be said to sing God’s Word, as to read it, as long as it is orderly composed and disposed for that action. Every duty must be performed according to the analogy of faith and founded on God’s Word. All prayer or preaching that does not correspond with sacred writings, notwithstanding any pretense of an extraordinary inspiration, I am to explode out of God’s worship. And as prayer and preaching must correspond with the sacred record, so must singing. And as we count them the best prayers and sermons that are fullest of Scripture, so those hymns that are founded on the sacred Scriptures can no more be denied to be of the Spirit than a man’s preaching or prayer which is full of the Word of God.
But how must we sing?
1. With understanding.[47] As we must pray, so we must sing. We must not only be guided by the tune, but the words of the psalm, the matter more than the manner; else this would be more the work of a chorister than a Christian. Upon this John Davenant cries out, adieu to the bellowing of the Papists, who sing in an unknown tongue. God will not understand us in this service, if we do not understand it ourselves.
2. We must sing with zeal and affection. Love is the fulfilling of the law. It is a notable saying of Augustine, “’Tis not crying, but loving sounds in the ears of God, that makes the music.”[48]
3. We must sing with grace.[49] It is grace, not nature, that sweetens the music. One well notes that grace is the root of true devotion. God will not hear sinners when they pray, no, nor when they sing—they make a noise like a cracked string of a lute or viol. The raven only croaks; it is the nightingale that sings. The singing of wicked men is but disturbance, not obedience. The saints above sing their hallelujahs in glory; the saints below must sing their psalms with grace.
4. We must sing with spiritual joy. Singing is the only triumphant gladness of a gracious heart. We must sing, as David danced before the ark, with shouting and rejoicing.[50]
5. We must sing with faith. This grace only puts a pleasantness upon every duty.[51] We must bring faith always to Christ’s Table, or else, as Augustine says, “if faith be asleep, Christ is asleep.” Faith carries on this ordinance of singing, so as it may be accepted of God.
6. We must sing with excited grace, not only with grace habitual, but excited and actual; we must stir up the grace in us[52] and cry out as David,[53] “Awake love, awake delight.” The clock must be wound up before it can guide our time. God loves active grace in duty, that the soul should be ready trimmed when it presents itself to Christ in any worship.
7. We must sing in the Spirit, as well as pray in the Spirit.[54] The Spirit must breathe as well as grace acts. Davenant says they are called spiritual songs, in point of their Original. The Spirit excites and completes the soul to this holy service. Thus, the apostle Paul exhorts to be filled with the Spirit,[55] and so calls us to sing spiritual songs as the effect of this fullness. This wind must fill our organs before we can make any music; ’tis so called.[56]
8. We must take great care to keep our hearts while about this work. One observes that without this, we may please men with the artificial suavity of the voice and displease God with the odious impurity of the heart.
9. Neglect not preparatory prayer for singing, as well as other duties. Jehovah is the great harmonist who must put every heart in tune, screw up every peg of affection, and strain every string of meditation.[57]
10. Labor to see your interest in Christ clear when you go about this work. If we are not in Christ, we are certainly out of tune. It is Christ who must put acceptation upon this service as well as all others. Here the altar must sanctify the gift. Christ perfumes the prayers of saints,[58] and He must articulate their singing. Though we have Esau’s garments, He can give us Jacob’s voice; if we are in Him, He can raise our hearts to a pleasing elevation.
11. Let us sometimes raise our hearts into holy contemplations. Let us think of the music of the bride-chamber—there shall be no cracked strings, displeasing sounds, harsh voices, nothing to abate our melody; there shall be no willows to hang our harps upon.[59] In the bride-chamber, there shall be no sorrow to interfere. When we sing the song of the Lamb, there shall be no grief to jar our harmony For that day let us all pray.
FINIS.
[1] Eph. 5:19
[2] Col. 3:16
[3] James 5:13
[4] Acts 16:25
[5] See also Ps. 95:1–2, 6
[6] Matt. 26:30
[7] 2 Chron. 29:30
[8] 2 Chron. 20:21–22
[9] Neh. 7:1
[10] Ex. 15:1
[11] 1 Cor. 14:15; Eph. 5:9; Col. 3:16
[12] Deut. 32
[13] Num. 21:17; Ps. 149:1–2
[14] Ex. 15:21
[15] Judg. 5:1
[16] “Divines” refers to the Westminster Divines, the men responsible for drafting the Westminster Confession of Faith.
[17] Isa. 52:7–8
[18] Ps. 65:13
[19] 1 Chron. 16:32–33
[20] Job 38:7
[21] Luke 2:13; Rev. 5:11
[22] Rev. 5:9–12; 15:3; 19:7–9; Ps. 98:1, 30:5
[23] Num. 21:17; Ps. 149:1–2; Ex. 15
[24] Acts 16:25
[25] Ex. 15
[26] Ps. 126
[27] Rev. 5:9–12
[28] Ex. 15
[29] Ps. 27:4, 6
[30] 2 Chron. 29:30
[31] 2 Chron. 20:20–21
[32] Matt. 26:30
[33] Acts 16:25
[34] 1 Cor. 14:5; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16
[35] 2 Chron. 20:17, 20–21
[36] Acts 16:25–26
[37] 2 Chron. 20:21–22
[38] Col. 3:16
[39] Acts 16:25
[40] Matt. 26:30
[41] Isa. 65:5
[42] Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16
[43] Acts 16
[44] Matt. 6:9–13
[45] Rom. 12
[46] Acts 4
[47] 1 Cor.14:15
[48] Isa. 5:1
[49] Col. 3:16
[50] 2 Sam. 6:13
[51] Heb. 4:3
[52] 1 Tim. 4:14
[53] Ps. 57:8
[54] 1 Cor. 14:15–16; Jude 20
[55] Eph. 5:18
[56] John 3:8
[57] Prov. 16:1
[58] Rev. 5:8.
[59] Psa. 137:2
