requiring ability to remember them was to engage them to a frequent use of so admirable devotions in their private offices. But the Psalms were not only of use to the church, as they lay in their own position and form, but the devout men of several ages drew them into collects, antiphonaries, responsories, and all other parts of their devotions. They made their prayers out of the Psalms; their confessions, their doxologies, their ejaculations, for the most part, were clauses or periods of the Psalter. St. Jerome made a collection of choice versicles, and put them together into their several classes, and that was much of his devotion; the collection is still extant under the name of "St. Jerome's Psalter." St. Athanasius made an index of the several occasions and matters of prayer and eucharist, and fitted psalms to each particular; that was his devotion; the Psalms entire as they lay, only he made titles of his own. I have seen, of later time, a short hymn of some eight verses, which are, indeed, choice sentences out of several psalms, set together to make a compendium of liturgy or breviary of our necessity and devotions, collected by St. Bernardine: it is a very good copy to be followed. But if we look into the old liturgies of the eastern and western churches, and, where we will, almost into the private devotions of the old writers, we may say of them in the expression of the prophet, "Hauriebant aquas è fontibus Salvatoris," " they drew their waters from the fountains of our blessed Saviour," but through the limbecks of David. But the practice of this devotion I derived from a higher precedent, even of Christ and his apostles: for 6 before the passion immediately "they sung a psalm,” saith the Scripture; "Hymno dicto," saith the vulgar Latin, “having recited or said a psalm." But, however, it was part of David's Psalter that was sung; it was the great Allelujah, as the Jews called it, beginning at the 113th psalm, to the 119th exclusively; part of that was sung. But this devotion continued with our blessed Saviour as long as breath was in him: for when he was upon the cross, he recited the 22d psalm ad verbum,' saith the tradition of the church; and that he began it, saith the Scripture, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" The whole psalm is rather a history than a prediction of the passion; and what Tertullian saith of the whole Psalter, is particularly verified of this, “Filium ad Patrem, id est, Christum ad Deum, verba facientem repræsentat;"" It represents the Son's address to his Father, that is, Christ speaking to God." Against the example of Christ, if we confront the practice of Antichrist, nothing can be said greater in commendation of this manner of devotion for bishop Hippolytus, in his oration of the end of the world, saith, that in the days of Antichrist, "Psalmorum decantatio cessabit,' they shall then no more use the singing or saying of psalms;" which when I had observed, without any further deliberation I fixed upon the Psalter as the best weapon against him, whose coming, we have great reason to believe, is not far off, so great preparation is making for him. 66 From the example of Christ this grew to be a practice apostolical, and their devotion came exactly home to the likeness of the design of this very book: they turned the Psalms into prayers. Thus it was said of Paul and Silas, Acts, xvi. "They prayed a psalm;" so it is in the Greek; and we have a copy left us of one of the prayers or collects, which they made out of the bowels of the second psalm ; it is in the fourth chapter of the Acts, beginning at the twenty-fourth verse, and ends at the thirty-first.And now I have shown you the reasons of my choice, and the precedents that I have followed. This last comes home to every circumstance of my book. I only add this, that since, according to the instruction of our blessed Saviour, God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth; no worshipping can be more true or more spiritual than the Psalter, said with a pure mind and a hearty devotion. For David was God's instrument to the church, "teaching and admonishing us," as our duty is to each other, "in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs;" and the Spirit of Truth was the grand Dictator of what David wrote: so that we may confidently use this devotion as the church of God ever did, making her addresses to God most frequently by the Psalms: so Prudentius reports the guise of Christendom. Te mente purâ simplici, Rogare curvato genu, Flendo et canendo discimus *. The prayers which I have collected out of the Psalms, are nothing else but the matter of the Psalms put into another mood, and fitted to the necessities of Christendom, and of ourselves in particular, according to the first designation or secondary intention of the blessed Spirit: for the use of them could not expire in Hymn. 2. Cathem. the person of David, though first occasioned, many of them, by his personal necessities: for "all Scripture was written for our learning, upon whom the ends of the world are come," saith the apostle and Christ, and his apostles, and the Church of all ages, hath taught us by his example and precepts, that the purposes of the Holy Ghost were of great extent, and the profits universal both for times and occasions; so also were the prayers which the church made out of the Psalms, and sung them in her public offices. St. Austin found great advantages by such devotions, as himself witnesses: "Cum reminiscor lacrymas meas, quas fudi ad cantus ecclesiæ, in primordiis recuperatæ fidei meæ,-magnam instituti hujus utilitatem agnosco ; When I call to mind the many tears I shed, when I heard the hymns and psalms of the church, I cannot but acknowledge the great benefit of this institution." And yet besides the spiritual sense of an actual devotion, which is sooner had in this use of the Psalms than of other prayers, I have had a meditation that this manner of devotion might be a good symbol and instrument of communion between Christians of a different persuasion for if we would communicate in the same private devotions, it were a great degree of peace and charity. The Nicene fathers, in their zeal against heresy, forbade their people to be present at the prayers of heretics and they had great reason, so long as they derived their heresy into their liturgy, into their very forms of baptism. But I am much scandalized, when I see a man refuse to communicate with me in my prayers, even such as are in his own Breviary or Manual. For, methinks, it is strange, that the Lord's prayer itself should be unhallowed in the mouth of a protestant, and yet the whole office from the mouth of one of their priests, though never so wicked, though a necromancer, a secret Jew, or any thing, so of their communion, shall lose no tittle of its sanctity and value. So long as nothing of controversy is brought into our prayers (and certainly we may very well pray to God without disputing), and devotion is not made a party; he that refuseth to join with me in what himself confesses true and holy, upon pretence I am a heretic, will certainly prove himself a schismatic. For true it is, a heretic is to be avoided, that is, in his temptation and in his heresy, just as a notorious fornicator, and adulterer, a sentenced drunkard, and no more; the apostles' rule excommunicates all alike, "with such men no not to eat :" and this rule cannot, with so much ease and certainty, be put to practice in the case of heresy as in the case of drunkenness; because heresy is as much harder to be judged, as the soul is more invisible than the body; especially if we make heresy to be an error, not in the great articles of faith only, but to consist in minutes also; as all they do who refuse to communicate with persons disagreeing even in the smallest article. But he, that is ready to join with all the societies of Christians in the world in those things, which are certainly true, just, and pious,—gives great probation that he hath at least animum catholicum,' no schismatical soul;' because he would actually communicate with all Christendom, if "bona fides in falso articulo," sincere persuasion (be it true or false) did not disoblige him; since he clearly distinguishes persons from things, |