your Dominions; which, no doubt, your Majesty wisely foresaw, when you pleased to grant and command that these Hymns should be annexed to all the Psalm-Books in English Metre; and I hope you shall thereby encrease both the honour of God, and of your Majesty; for these Hymns, and the knowledge which they offer, could no other way, with such certainty and so little inconvenience, be conveyed to the common people, as by that means which your Majesty hath graciously provided. And now, maugre their malice who labour to disparage and suppress these Helps to Devotion, they shall, I trust, have free scope to work that effect, which is desired, and to which end I was encouraged to translate and compose them. For how meanly soever some men may think of this endeavour, I trust the success shall make it appear, that the Spirit of God was the first mover of the work; wherein, as I have endeavored to make my expressions such, as may not be contemptible to men of best understandings, so I have also laboured to suit them to the nature of the subject, and the common people's capacities, without regard of catching the vain blasts of opinion. The same also hath been the aim of Master Orlando Gibbons, your Majesty's servant, and one of the Gentlemen of your Honourable Chapel, in fitting them with tunes; for he hath chosen to make his music agreeable to the matter, and what the common apprehension can best admit, rather than to the curious fancies of the time; which path both of us could easily have trodden. Not caring therefore what any of those shall censure, who are more apt to controul than to consider, I commit this to God's blessing and your favourable protection; humbly beseeching your Majesty to accept of these our endeavours, and praying God to sanctify both us and this work to his glory; wishing also, most unfeignedly, everlasting consolations to your Majesty, for those temporary comforts you have vouchsafed me, and that felicity here, which may advance your happiness in the life to come. Your Majesty's Most Loyal Subject, GEORGE WITHER. O F THE FIRST PART The HYMNS and SONGS of the CHURCH, Containing those which are translated out of the Canonical Scripture, together with such other Hymns and Creeds as have anciently been sung in the Church of ENGLAND. The Preface. PLAINLY false is their supposition, who conceive that the Hymns, Songs, and Elegies of the Old Testament are impertinent to these latter ages of the Church; for neither the actions nor writings of the ancient Israelites, which are recorded by the Holy Spirit, were permitted to be done or written for their own sakes, so much as that they might be profitable to warn and instruct us of the latter times, according to Saint Paul, 1 Cor. x. And indeed, so much Apostle in the place is not only testified by that afore recited, and throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews; but the very names of these persons and places, mentioned in these Hymns and Songs, do manifest it, and far better express the nature of that which they mystically point out, than of what they are literally applied unto, as those, who will look into their proper significations, shall apparently discover. That, therefore, these parcels of Holy Scripture, which are for the most part metre in their original tongue, may be the better remembered to the glory of God, and the oftener repeated, those ends for which they were written, they are here disposed into Lyric verse, and do make the first part of this book; which book is called "The Hymns and Songs of the Church;" not for that I would have it thought part of the Church Liturgy, but because they are in the person of all the Faithful, and do, for the most part, treat of those things which concern the whole Catholic Church. |