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ing and improving it. For it adds dignity and solemnity to the public worship; it sweetly influences and raises our passions, while we assist at it; and makes us do our duty with the greatest pleasure and cheerfulness; all which are very proper and powerful means towards creating in us that holy attention and erection of mind, which I have shewn to be the most reasonable part of this our reasonable service.

Such is our nature, that even the best things, and most worthy of our esteem, do not always employ and detain our thoughts, in proportion to their real value, unless they be set off and greatened by some outward circumstances, which are fitted to raise admiration and surprise in the breasts of those who hear, or behold them. And this good effect is wrought in us by the power of sacred music. To it we, in good measure, owe the dignity and solemnity of our public worship: which else, I fear, in its natural simplicity and plainness, would not so strongly strike, or so deeply affect the minds, as it ought to do, of the sluggish and inattentive, that is, of the far greatest part of mankind. But when voices and instruments are skilfully adapted to it, it appears to us in a majestic air and shape, and give us very awful and reverent impressions; which, while they are upon us, it is impossible for us not to be fixed and composed to the utmost. We are then in the same state of mind, that the devout patriarch was, when he awoke from his holy dream and ready with him to say to ourselves: Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven, Gen. xxviii. 17.

Further; the availableness of harmony to promote a pious disposition of mind will appear, from the great influence it naturally has on the passions, which, when well directed and rightly applied, are the wings and sails of the mind, that speed its passage to perfection, and are of particular and remarkable use in the offices of devotion; for devotion consists in an ascent of the mind towards God, attended with holy breathings of soul,

and a divine exercise of all the passions and powers of the mind. These passions the melody of sounds serves only to guide and elevate towards their proper object : these it first calls forth and encourages, and then gradually raises and inflames. This it does to all of them, as the matter of the hymns sung gives an occasion for the employing them; but the power of it is chiefly seen in advancing that most heavenly passion of love, which reigns always in pious breasts, and is the surest and most inseparable mark of true devotion; which recommends what we do in virtue of it to God, and makes it relishing to ourselves; and without which all our spiritual offerings, our prayers and our praises, are both insipid and unacceptable. At this our religion begins, and at this it ends; it is the sweetest companion and improvement of it here upon earth, and the very earnest and foretaste of heaven of the pleasures of which nothing further is revealed to us, than that they consist in the practice of holy music, and holy love; the joint enjoyment of which, we are told, is to be the happy lot of all pious souls to endless ages. And observable therefore it is, that that apostle, in whose breast this divine quality seems most to have abounded, has also spoken the most advantageously of vocal and instrumental harmony, and afforded us the best argument for the lawful use of it: for such I account the description, which he has given us of the devotions of angels and blessed spirits performed by harps and hymns in the Apocalypse. A description which, whether real or metaphorical, yet, belonging to the evangelical state, certainly implies thus much, that whatever is there said to be made use of, may now, under the Gospel, be warrantably and laudably employed.

And in his steps trod the holy martyr Ignatius, who, probably, saw St. John in the flesh, and learnt that lesson of divine love from him, which, after his example, he inculcated every where in his epistles; and together with it instils into the churches he writes to, a love of holy harmony, by frequent allusions and comparisons drawn from that science, which recur oftener in his

writings, than in those of any other ancient whatever, and seem to intimate to us, that the devotions of the church were set off with some kind of melody, even in those early times, notwithstanding we usually place the rise of the institution much lower.

Would we then have love at these assemblies? Would we have our spirit softened and enlarged, and made fit for the illapses of the divine Spirit? Let us, as often as we can, call in to our aid the assistances of music, to work us up into this heavenly temper. All selfishness and narrowness of mind, all rancour and peevishness, vanish from the heart, where the love of divine harmony dwells; as the evil spirit of Saul retired before the harp of David, 1 Sam. xvi. 23. The devotional, as well as the active part of religion is, we know, founded in good nature; and one of the best signs and causes of good nature is, I am sure, to delight in such pious entertainments.

And now it naturally follows from hence (which was the last advantage, from whence I proposed to recommend the use of church music) that it makes our duty a pleasure, and enables us, by that means, to perform it with the utmost vigour and cheerfulness. It is certain, that the more pleasing an action is to us, the more keenly and eagerly are we used to employ ourselves in it, the less liable are we, while it is going forward, to tire and droop, and be dispirited. So that whatever contributes to make our devotion taking (within such a degree as not at the same time to dissipate and distract it) does, for that very reason, contribute to our attention and holy warmth of mind in performing it. What we take delight in, we no longer look upon as a task, but return to always with desire, dwell upon with satisfaction, and quit with uneasiness. And this it was which made holy David express himself in so pathetical a manner concerning the service of the sanctuary; as the hart panteth after the water-brooks (says he) so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea even for the living God. When, O when shall I come to appear

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before the presence of God? Psal. xliii. 1, 2. passionate wish, as it certainly proceeded from the pleasure he took in reflecting on those holy offices, so, I question not, but a good part of that pleasure arose from the sacred melody which accompanied them. For so he himself instructs us to think of him in many other passages of the Psalms; particularly where he breaks out into this pious exultation: It is well seen, O my God, how thou goest, how thou my God and King goest in the sanctuary: the singers go before, the minstrels follow after; in the midst are the damsels playing with the timbrels, Psal. lxviii. 24, 25. And if the image of that holy quire, now only present to his memory, gave him so much pleasure, what transports do we think he was under, when he himself assisted at the service, and his ears drank in their holy strains?

And the same may be observed to be the case, as to some of the fathers of the first rank, St. Chrysostom, St. Austin, and St. Basil: as eloquent as they naturally were, yet they never appear so eloquent, never put on such a variety of thought and expression, such an elevation of soul and style, as when they are discoursing of the energy and power of church music. Could I produce to you the passages from them to this purpose at length, you would say, that men who spake thus feelingly, and with so much ecstasy, of the holy hymns and anthems of the church, when they were at a distance from them, must have an heaven almost in their breasts, when they partook of them. If therefore the praises of God, tunefully performed, be naturally attended with an holy pleasure, that pleasure, I say, must needs produce attention; actuate all the springs, and enliven all the motions, of devout and heavenly, nay even of earthly and sluggish minds. The ancients do sometimes use the metaphor of an army, when they are speaking of the joint devotions put up to God in the assembly of his saints: they say, we there meet together in troops, to do violence to heaven; that we encompass, we besiege the throne of God, and bring such an united force, as is not to be

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withstood. And, I suppose, we may as innocently carry on the metaphor, as they have begun it and say, that church music, when decently ordered, may have as great uses in this army of supplicants, as the sound of the trumpet has among the hosts of the mighty men! It equally rouses the courage, equally gives life, and vigour, and resolution, and unanimity, to these holy assailants.

Thus have I shewn you, in how many several respects vocal and instrumental harmony may be serviceable to awaken, fix, and inflame us in our public addresses to God; and how far therefore it recommends itself to the approbation and use of all pious Christians, upon this single consideration: so that, though the worship now under the Gospel be spiritual, yet are we not debarred, on that account, from employing several means and instruments of worship, which are not so. On the contrary, from the spiritual nature of our worship, it follows, that all such outward helps and expedients may and ought to be laid hold of, as do really assist and promote the inward worship of our spirits. And for this reason, therefore, among others, the melodious harmony now practised in our church ought to be continued.

Till then our brethren of the separation can prove, either that music has not that influence on the mind of man, as it has been represented to have; or that the minds of us Christians are not so disposed to receive its impressions, as those of other men; that we have not the same faculties to be wrought upon, the same passions to be regulated, the same dulness and distraction of mind to be cured; till this can be made out by them, they must allow us to retain those modes of worship, which we and our forefathers, from the infancy of the Reformation down to this day, have practised, to our great spiritual comfort: modes of worship, which they, perhaps, who stand aloof from them, may think (and call sometimes) rudiments of the law, and weak and beggarly elements, Gal. iv. 9; but which we, by experience, find and feel to be very strong and powerful incentives to godliness.

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