they sung only in his churches. They exhilarated the convivial assemblies of the Calvinists, were commonly heard in the streets, and accompanied the labours of the artificer. The weavers and woollen manufacturers of Flanders, many of whom left the loom and entered into the ministry, are said to have been the capital performers in this science. At length Marot's psalms formed an appendix to the catechism of Geneva, and were interdicted to the catholics under the most severe penalties. In the language of the orthodox, psalm-singing and heresy where syonymous terms. It was Calvin's system of reformation, not only to strip religion of its superstitious and ostensible pageantries, of crucifixes, images, tapers, superb vestments, and splendid processions, but of all that was estimable in the sight of the people, and even of every simple ornament, every significant symbol, and decent ceremony; in a word, to banish every thing from his church which attracted or employed the senses, or which might tend to mar the purity of an abstracted adoration, and of a mental intercourse with the deity. It is hard to determine, how Calvin could reconcile the use of singing, even when purged from the corruptions and abuses of popery, to so philosophical a plan of worship. On a parallel principle, and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at least have retained the use of pictures in the church. But a new sect always draws its converts from the multitude and the meanest of the people, who can have no relish for the more elegant externals. Calvin well knew that the manufacturers of Germany were no judges of pictures. At the same time it was necessary that his congregation should be kept in good humour by some kind of pleasurable gratification and allurement, which might qualify and enliven the attendance on the more rigid duties of praying and preaching. Calvin therefore, intent as he was to form a new church on a severe model, had yet too much sagacity to exclude every auxiliary to devotion. Under this idea, he permitted an exercise, which might engage the affections, without violating the simplicity of his worship; and sensible that his chief resources were in the rabble of a republic, and availing himself of that natural propensity which prompts even vulgar minds to express their more animated feelings in rhyme and music, he conceived a mode of universal psalmody, not too refined for common capacities, and fitted to please the populace. The rapid propagation of Calvin's religion, and his numerous proselytes, are a strong proof of his address in planning such a sort of service. France and Germany were instantly infatuated with a love of psalm-singing: which being admirably calculated to kindle and diffuse the flame of fanaticism, was peculiarly serviceable to the purposes of faction, and frequently served as the trumpet to rebellion. These energetic hymns of Geneva, under the conduct of the Calvinistic preachers, excited and supported a variety of popular insurrections; they filled the most flourishing cities of the Low-countries with sedition and tumult, and fomented the fury which defaced many of the most beautiful and venerable churches of Flanders. This infectious frenzy of sacred song soon reached England, at the very critical point of time, when it had just embraced the reformation: and the new psalmody was obtruded on the new English liturgy by some few officious zealots, who favoured the discipline of Geneva, and who wished to abolish, not only the choral mode of worship in general, but more particularly to suppress the TE DEUM, BENEDICTUS, MAGNIFICAT, JUBILATE, NUNC DIMITTIS, and the rest of the liturgic hymns, which were supposed to be contaminated by their long and antient connection with the Roman missal, or, at least in their prosaic form, to be unsuitable to the new system of worship. Although Wyat and Surrey had before made translations of the Psalms into metre, Thomas Sternhold was the first whose metrical version of the Psalms was used in the church of England. Sternhold was a native of Hampshire, and probably educated at Winchester college. Having passed some time at Oxford, he became groom of the robes to king Henry the Eighth. In this department, either his diligent services or his knack at rhyming so pleased the king, that his majesty be queathed him a legacy of one hundred marks. He continued in the same office under Edward the Sixth, and is said to have acquired some degree of reputation about the court for his poetry. Being of a serious disposition, and an enthusiast to reformation, he was much offended at the lascivious ballads which prevailed among the courtiers: and, with a laudable design to check these indecencies, undertook a metrical version of the Psalter, "thinking thereby, says Antony Wood, that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets, but did not, only some few excepted." Here was the zeal, if not the success, of his fellow labourer Clement Marot. A singular coincidence of circumstances is, notwithstanding, to be remarked on this occasion. Vernacular versions for general use of the Psalter were first published both in France and England, by laymen, by court-poets, and by servants of the court. Nor were the respective translations entirely completed by themselves and yet they translated nearly an equal number of psalms, Marot having versified fifty*, and Sternhold fifty-one+. Sternhold died in the year 1549. His fifty-one psalms were printed the same year by Edward Whitchurch, under the following title. "All such Psalms of David as Thomas Sternholde late grome of the kinges Maiestyes robes did in his lyfe tyme drawe into Englysshe metre‡." They are without the ATH. OXON. i. 76. ["Marot first published thirtypsalms, and afterward translated twenty more, which he published at Geneva in 1543, with the other thirty, together with a preface written by Calvin." The Rev. Charles Dunster's Considerations on Psalmody.-PARK.] [Mr. Haslewood has pointed out an edition printed by G. Whitchurch in 1551, which contains 37 psalms by Sternhold, and to these seven more were adjoined. See Censura Liter. x. 4.-PARK.] [" Henry the Eighth," says Brathwaite, "for a few psalmes of David translated and turned into English meetre by Sternhold, made him groom of his privie chamber." English Gentleman, p. 191, Against George Wither of Lin 1630. coln's Inn, who had published "Hymnes and Songs of the Church" by royal li cense in 1623, it was alleged that he had “indecently obtruded upon the divine calling;" to which he indignantly replied, "I wonder what divine calling Hopkins and Sternhold had, more than I have, that their metricall Psalmes may be allowed of rather than my Hymnes. Surely, yf to have been groomes of the privie-chamber were sufficient to qualify them, that profession [the law] which I am of, may as well fitt me for what I have undertaken." Schollers Purgatory, p. 40. Wither proceeds to say:—“ Excuse me, if I seeme a little too playne in discovering the faultiness of that whereof so many are overweening: for I do it not to disparage the pious endeavours of those who tooke paynes in musical notes, as is the second [third] edition in 1552. He probably lived to prepare the first edition for the press, as it is dedicated by himself to king Edward the Sixth. Cotemporary with Sternhold, and his coadjutor, was John Hopkins: of whose life nothing more is known, than that he was a clergyman and a schoolmaster of Suffolk, and perhaps a graduate at Oxford about the year 1544. Of his abilities as a teacher of the classics, he has left a specimen in some Latin stanzas prefixed to Fox's MARTYROLOGY. He is rather a better English poet than Sternhold; and translated fifty-eight of the psalms, distinguished by the initials of his name. Of the rest of the contributors to this undertaking, the chief, at least in point of rank and learning, was William Whyttingham, promoted by Robert earl of Leicester to the deanery of Durham, yet not without a strong reluctance to comply with the use of the canonical habiliments. Among our religious exiles in the reign of Mary, he was Calvin's principal favorite, from whom he received ordination. So pure was his faith, that he was thought worthy to succeed to the congregation of Geneva, superintended by Knox, the Scotch reformer; who, from a detestation of idols, proceeded to demolish the churches in which they were contained. It was one of the natural consequences of Whyttingham's translation from Knox's pastorship at Geneva to an English deanery, that he destroyed or removed many beautiful and harmless monuments of antient art in his cathedral. To a man, who had so highly spiritualised his religious conceptions, as to be convinced that a field, a street, or a barn, were fully sufficient for all the operations of christian that translation; but rather, commending their laborious and christian intention, do acknowledge that (considering the tymes they lived in, and of what quality they were) they made so worthye an attempt, as may justly shame us who came after, to see it no better seconded, during all the flourishing tymes which have followed their troublesome age: especially seeing, howe curiously our language and expressions are refined in our triviall discourses." Yet Wither, like his predecessors, professes to have used that "simplicity of speech which best becometh the subject," and to have as naturally and as plainly expressed the sense of Scripture, as most prose translation have done. Few things perhaps are more difficult in metrical composition, than to unite simplicity with gracefulness. Some of our most distinguished modern poets have failed to produce such union.-PARK.] worship, the venerable structures raised by the magnificent piety of our ancestors could convey no ideas of solemnity, and had no other charms than their ample endowments. Beside the psalms he translated, all which bear his initials, by way of innovating still further on our established formulary, he versified the Decalogue, the Nicene, Apostolic, and Athanasian Creeds, the Lord's Prayer, the TE DEUM, the Song of the three Children, with other hymns which follow the book of psalmody. How the Ten Commandments and the Athanasian Creed, to say nothing of some of the rest, should become more edifying and better suited to common use, or how they could receive improvement in any respect or degree, by being reduced into rhyme, it is not easy to perceive. But the real design was, to render that more tolerable which could not be entirely removed, to accommodate every part of the service to the psalmodic tone, and to clothe our whole liturgy in the garb of Geneva. All these, for he was a lover of music, were sung in Whyttingham's church of Durham under his own directions. Heylin says, that from vicinity of situation, he was enabled to lend considerable assistance to his friend Knox in the introduction of the presbyterian hierarchy into Scotland. I must indulge the reader with a stanza or two of this dignified fanatic's divine poetry from his Creeds and the Decalogue. From the Athanasian Creed. The Father God is, God the Son, God Holy Ghost also, Yet are there not three Gods in all, From the Apostolic Creed. From thence shall he come for to judge, All men both dead and quick; I in the holy ghost believe, And church that's catholick. Among them is the hundredth, and the hundred and nineteenth. |