SOURCE: Escott, Harry. “Revolutionary Manifesto.” In Isaac Watts, Hymnographer: A Study of the Beginnings, Development, and Philosophy of the English Hymn, pp. 121-31. London: Independent Press Ltd., 1962.

[In the following essay, Escott discusses the content of Watts's work A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody and its relationship to the preface to his Hymns and Spiritual Songs.]

Chronologically Isaac Watts was a hymn-writer before he turned his attention to the reform of metrical psalmody. This was an accident. His early sporadic hymnody at Southampton supplied the immediate need of a local congregation, with more advanced ideas of the nature of congregational praise, and which seems to have already used hymns in its worship. However, such sporadic hymn-writing could not long satisfy Watts's philosophic mind. He wished to commend the Christian hymn to the Church as a whole; and such a purpose demanded a full-dress apologia of an Evangelic hymnody. Accordingly, the logically prior writing in Watts's reform is not the 1707 preface to Hymns and Spiritual Songs, but A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody which followed the text of that volume, and was never again published during the author's life. This essay is the quarry from which he drew material for the preface to the Hymns and for the later preface to The Psalms of David Imitated …, 1719.

The importance of the Short Essay to the student of Watts's work is that it shows how the two main branches of his reform—psalmody and hymnody—are organically related, and that his work on the Christian psalm, though perhaps chronologically a later product, was logically prior to his work on the Christian hymn. Thus the Essay, which he had hoped to present in fuller form, is actually the revolutionary manifesto of a new system of Church praise.

The Essay is divided roughly into two sections: on pp. 233-55 Watts states his case for the Christianized psalm, and then on pp. 256-76 he shows how the deficiencies of the Christianized psalm lead quite naturally to the use of hymns. In spite of his “youthful aggressiveness” we perceive here, as in other things, that he introduces his reform gradually, almost imperceptibly, according to the principle of festina lente.¹

The opening pages are concerned mainly with linguistic matters and are of little value, except that they show the thoroughness of Watts's scholarship and research.

The argument proper begins on p. 241 when Watts reminds the reader that the time-honoured metrical psalms are really no true translation of the Word of God but “inventions of men” (cf. also preface to Psalms, 1719, p. xix). Rhyme and short stanza forms trammelled the varied expression of the original Hebrew, and rendered literal translation impossible (p. 243). The English metrical psalm, therefore, far from being sacrosanct, was a convention and a crippling one, though hallowed by long usage in the Church and from being bound together with the Scriptures (cf. preface to Horae Lyricae, 1706, p. viii). But, Watts goes on, it is not necessary for us to sing the Word of God. While it is essential to keep close to the original when God's Word is read, our response to that Word in singing cannot be so stereotyped, as worship-song must be our own peculiar response:

By Reading we are instructed what have been the Dealings of God with Men in all Ages, and how their Hearts have been exercis'd in their Wanderings [sic] from God, and Temptations, or in their Returns and Breathings towards God again, but Songs are generally Expressions of our own Experiences, or of his Glories. … We breath [sic] out our Souls towards him …

(p. 243).

This is the most important statement in the Essay. It shows how Watts worked from a clear philosophy of Christian worship. Singing is the response of the redeemed community. He takes up this idea again and again in this and in his other hymnological writings (cf. preface to Psalms, p. x; preface to Hymns, p. iv, where he speaks of the singing congregation's “ascent toward Heaven”).

In the interest of reality, and to make the Psalms our own response to God's Word, he uses the method of Imitation. He shows us that this method is found in Scripture itself (pp. 245-7), and outlines his own manner of imitating the Psalms of David:

(1) Historical and doctrinal Psalms are used as present meditations, though pronouns, etc., may require to be altered to turn some songs into histories

(p. 245).

(2) Other Psalms cannot be used in the above way, being full of idiosyncrasies of circumstance, time, place, etc. These peculiar features must be removed

(p. 247).

(3) Wherever possible the Psalms are “naturalized”—made British

(p. 246).

(4) Often their content is evangelised

(p. 247).

He anticipates the objection that he will be accused of tampering with God's Word, by repeating that God's Word still abides for instruction by being read. It is another matter with sung praise which should be a response to that Word. (It should be said here, however, that Watts also regarded praise as an instrument of edification. We have dealt with this side of his work in Chapters 7 and 9, below.) Besides, he adds, even when the Psalms of David are sung in worship, a selective principle is in operation. And even in Jewish worship it is improbable that all the Psalms were used. Watts implies that our English translators were off the track when they metricized the whole Psalter for public worship (cf. preface to Psalms, p. ix). To illustrate how this selective principle has been adopted in congregational praise, he cites Patrick's preface to his version of the Psalms and mentions Patrick's work in the field of metrical psalmody which was popular with some congregations of Dissenters (p. 248).²

Watts now forestalls the further objection that there is no need to omit or emend parts of the text of the Psalms. Why not sing the words of David as they stand, and think the evangelical interpretation as you sing (p. 250)? This would not make for reality in worship. Besides not one in twenty worshippers is capable of understanding the Psalmist's deep and dark expressions, let alone interpreting them. He quotes, as he often does directly or indirectly in this Essay, the guidance of St. Paul: we must sing with understanding (cf. preface to Psalms, p. xii). There is, moreover, in public worship the need for something approaching uniformity of interpretation.

Even the best metrical translations of the Psalms, he thinks, are inadequate. Often by their use devotion is interrupted by religious anachronisms and meaningless words and phrases (p. 251). He draws a picture, mildly humorous, of worship in his day. But pulls himself up in his gentle fun-making. He would not be thought to make fun of the old Hebrew modes of expression. They are the beauty of Hebrew praise, but they will not do for Christian song (p. 252). He owes more than he can say in the nourishment of his spiritual life to the Book of Psalms (cf. Watts's eulogy of the Psalter in the preface to the Psalms of David Imitated …, pp. xxvii-viii). Although there are parts of the Hebrew Psalter that may be retained in the worship-song of the Christian Church, in translating the rest two rules should be observed:

(1) We should translate them as David might have done had he been a Christian. As Watts says later in his preface to the Psalms (p. xx), we must “teach [our] Author to speak like a Christian.” The secret of the power and adequacy of Scripture songs, he proceeds, is that they exactly fit and express the need of the worshipper at a specific time and under particular circumstances. They have concreteness, particularity, and they are dated. Accordingly if we are to use these Scripture songs they must first be adapted to our affairs, concerns and circumstances (cf. also preface to Psalms, p. xix). Had David been born in Gospel times he would have been, as Watts tries himself to be, the Poet of the Atonement (p. 253).

(2) The Hebrew Psalms are to be used only as patterns of what, psychologically, praise should be. This is exactly how the Psalms were used, Watts reminds us, in the Primitive Church. His method of imitation finds its precedent there. The Psalms are never slavishly copied in early Church usage; they serve only as models. He points out that the early Christians borrowed comparatively little from the Book of Psalms, and where they so borrow they appropriate the matter as their own, and accordingly make modifications and additions.

… tho the Disciples and primitive Christians had so many and so vast Occasions for Praise, yet I know but two Pieces of Songs they borrow'd from the Book of Psalms. One is mention'd in Luke 19. 38 where the Disciples assume a Part of a Verse from the 118th Psalm, but sing it with Alterations and Additions to the Words of David. The other is the Beginning of the second Psalm, sung by Peter and John and their Company, Acts 4. 23, 24, etc. You find there an Addition of Praise in the Beginning, ‘Lord thou art God which hast made Heaven and Earth, and the Sea, and all that in them is.’ Then there is a Narration of what David spoke, ‘who by the Mouth of thy Servant David hast said,’ etc. Next follow the two Verses of that Psalm, but not in the very Words of the Psalmist: Afterwards an Explication of the ‘Heathen’ and the ‘People,’ (viz.) the ‘Gentiles’ and ‘Israel’: The ‘Kings’ and the ‘Rulers,’ (viz.) ‘Herod’ and ‘Pontius Pilate,’ and the ‘Holy Child Jesus’ is God's ‘anointed.’ Then there is an Enlargement of the Matter of Fact by a Consideration of the Hand of God in it, and the Song concludes with the breathing of their Desires towards God for Mercies most precisely suited to their Day and Duty …

(pp. 254-5: this method is seen illustrated in Watts's short metre version of Psalm 2, Psalms of David Imitated, 1719).

Watts regards himself more as a reactionary than a reformer. As he brings the first section of his Essay to a close with one of his warm and soaring perorations, he prays that he might be used of God to bring about a “returning Glory in the Churches” (p. 255). All he proposes to do is to imitate the methods and practices of the New Testament Church, extending them to meet modern requirements. It is a returning glory he seeks.

Finally, we discover in this first part of the Short Essay that Watts's hymnological work was guided by an evolutionary principle:

Every Beam of new Light that broke into the World gave occasion of fresh Joy to the Saints, and they were taught to sing of Salvation in all the Degrees of its advancing Glory

(p. 254).³

He grasped the truth of progressive revelation (so far as human apprehension is concerned), and with it the need for a parallel evolution in praise. Psalmody could not be a static thing, but the living and evolving expression of an ever-advancing experience of Divine Grace.⁴

In the second section of the Essay Watts goes on to demonstrate that there is also need for other spiritual songs in Christian worship. If, as he has said, our metrical psalms even when they are closest in content to the Bible are in reality the inventions of men, why not go all the way and produce “human composures” (p. 256)? And if singing in worship should be the expression of present experience, there are manifestly occasions when Psalms and Scripture songs cannot meet our requirements (pp. 256-7). In addition, we have a higher revelation of God than David had. “Where can you find a Psalm that speaks the Miracles of Wisdom and Power as they are discover'd in a crucify'd Christ?” (p. 258).

The spiritual inspiration of this Essay, as indeed of the preface to the Psalms (cf. p. xx), is St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.⁵ It is liberty in the Spirit that Watts claims for the psalmodic practices of the Church. And in this sense he approaches the Lutheran position:

… shall it be suppos'd that we must admonish one another of the old Jewish Affairs and Ceremonies in Verse, and make Melody with those ‘weak and beggarly Elements, and the Yoke of Bondage,’ and yet never dare to speak of the Wonders of new Discovery except in the plain and simple Language of Prose?

(p. 259).

But the objection will be made, Watts imagines, that these evangelical hymns for which he is now pleading are already to be found in the New Testament itself. Why then write others? Whilst thanking God for these Scripture evangelic hymns, he points out that they are seldom used. Besides, they are too fragmentary and too few to express the “glorious Revelations” of the Gospel in their fullness. He clinches his argument by applying the principle of Christian liberty,

… nor can we suppose God excludes all other Parts of the Gospel from Verse and Singing

(p. 260).

In support of this he reminds the reader that all our prayer and praise as Christians should be, according to our Lord's command, in the name of Jesus Christ. He shows the inconsistency of praying and preaching in His name, if when we sing we remain in the Old Dispensation (p. 261; cf. also preface to Psalms, p. xviii). The Christian Church cannot have a static system of hymnody: new occasions, new emphases call for new hymns (p. 263). Even the Jews sometimes found the ancient songs did not fit their present requirements, and made others.

God did not think any of his own inspired Hymns clear and full and special enough to express the Praise that was his due for new Blessings of Grace and Providence … and 'tis but according to his own Requirement, that the British Islands should make their present Mercies under the Gospel the Subject of fresh Praises

(p. 263).

God does not expect the Church to limit itself to the spiritual songs of the New Testament, any more than he does to the Psalms of the Old:

… [the New Testament hymns] are given to us as small Originals, by Imitation whereof the Churches should be furnished with Matter for Psalmody, by those who are capable of composing spiritual Songs according to the various or special Occasions of Saints or Churches

(pp. 263-4).

To regard the New Testament hymns as fixed forms of praise for all time, “would be to sink the Gospel, which is a Dispensation of the Spirit of Liberty, of Joy, and of Glory, beneath the Level of Judaism, when the Saints were kept in hard Bondage, and had not half so much Occasion for Praise” (p. 264).⁶

Watts now appeals to the worshipper's experience (cf. Chapter 4, above). Surely hymn-singing is lawful, because it has produced “Divine Delight” and “spiritual Joy and Consolation” (pp. 265-6). Along with this appeal to experience he incorporates the argument from the Epistle to the Galatians:

… if we would but stand fast in the Liberty of the Gospel, and not tie our Consciences up to meer [sic] Forms of the Old Testament, etc.

(p. 266).

But as he will not have Christians sing anything “without due knowledge and Conviction” he proposes to answer a few further objections that might be raised (p. 266).

Is not the singing of Psalms and Old Testament songs commanded by God? Yes, but only of the Israelite. If you take the commandment to apply to yourselves, why should you abhor musical instruments in worship? These are equally commanded of the Israelite. Besides, if these commands bind us to sing only inspired praises, they bind us equally to inspired forms of prayer. We do not keep to the latter, why then should we be sticklers for the former (p. 267)?

Does not the example of Scripture direct us to inspired matter for singing? Yes, but again these examples are Jewish, and reflect a very ceremonious worship, and they do not prove that the Jews themselves were forbidden upon all occasions to use more private composures in their synagogues. The selective principle already referred to (pp. 247-8) was adopted even in Jewish worship (pp. 267-8).

If what you say be true, are we likely to make better songs than the inspired ones? Do we not dishonour God by our inferior hymns? The objection would be valid, says Watts, if we applied the principle underlying it to the other parts of worship. If this jealousy for the perfection of inspired forms be sincere, why then should we not use scriptural forms of praying and preaching, as well as of singing (p. 267; cf. also preface to Psalms, 1719, p. xviii)?

But, adds Watts, in a most important passage, which has already claimed our attention (cf. Chapter 4, above), the contrast between inspired and uninspired hymns is not the true issue. The Spirit is not concerned to produce perfect hymnody, but out of his desire for reality in worship He accommodates Himself to the circumstances and time of the worshipper. “Perfect” psalmody is not that which most nearly reaches an abstract ideal, but that which fits close to a personal and historical situation. It is the breath of reality in our praises that matters most of all (p. 269). The same idea is expressed again in A Guide to Prayer. But he pulls himself up, as he did earlier on (p. 251). He by no means excludes from psalmody the use of Bible words and phrases in modern hymns. They are, on the contrary, of extraordinary assistance both in praise and prayer. The Spirit attests to that. But before using them we must make them our own (p. 269). In the same way as sermons in a large sense may be called the Word of God, so may humanly composed hymns (p. 270). This we have noticed was the position of Baxter, who really began the movement to emancipate psalmody from the oppression of literalism (cf. Chapter 3, above), but it was Watts who carried Baxter's ideas to their logical conclusion and won the first great battle in the campaign for psalmody's liberty.

But a further objection may arise: in Scripture we have the promise of the Holy Spirit's assistance in preaching and prayer, but not in the composing of hymns. How then can we lawfully write such and sing them in the Church? In answer, Watts reminds the objector that there are many performances necessary for edification within the Church for which there is no mention, explicitly, of the aid of the Spirit, such as Bible-translation, homiletics, and the writing or study of religious books. Nor is there, he adds, any express encouragement of the Spirit's presence in turning the Psalms of David into English rhyme and metre. Were we to put all the emphasis on a charismatic worship, we should have nothing singable at all. Watts is no doubt thinking of the extreme position taken by some Baptist congregations who would not permit conjoint singing, even of metrical psalms, but who had “singing prophets” (cf. Chapter 4, above). The Primitive Church, Watts agrees, had a charismatic ministry, but not wholly so. The ordinary assistance of the Holy Spirit is invoked in the duties of preaching and praying, why not then in the other part of public worship, the composing and singing of hymns (pp. 270-1)?

We have noticed immediately before Watts the emergence of a group of ministerial hymnists within Dissent. It was Watts who gave this movement prestige and impetus. He holds (p. 271) that in every age there should be some ministers fitted for the task of supplying “Hymns to answer the chief Designs and Wants of the Church for that Day for publick Worship.” There is nothing despotic about Watts's hymnology. True, his work for Church praise did come to exercise a tyranny, as the metrical psalmody had done before it. Watts's Psalms and Hymns were almost “deified” in some quarters as Sternhold and Hopkins had been. No claim was made by Watts himself to substantiate this despotism. His philosophy of praise as we see it in the Short Essay could never have been the source of a static and authoritarian hymnody (Chapter 9).

Watts envisages a final objection: ought we not to sing what God has given for this end, and not “the Inventions of Men”? As on pp. 241-3, he replies that the metrical psalms themselves are human inventions, necessary to keep decent order and decorum in public worship. He quotes Boyse's preface in this regard (p. 272). There are some, he continues, who will freely use as God's Word parts of Scripture strung together and arranged for congregational singing. Such rhymed paraphrases (he is thinking probably of Barton's Centuries⁷) have no precedent in David's use of the Old Testament. David's method of using Scripture was Watts's own method. David dealt with the Law in an assimilative and creative way. So should we deal with the Gospel in our songs. He repeats what he said earlier on: the New Testament text as it stands is intended mostly to be read for instruction and not to be sung in public worship. The promiscuous use of chapters and verses of the New Testament for singing is, Watts maintains, not in the will of God; but the composition of “spiritual Songs by humane [sic] Art agreeable to the Sense of Scripture and the Christian Faith” is (pp. 272-3). Thus Watts's work, as we have said (Chapter 3, above), is linked on the one hand with Baxter's, who departed from the literalism of the Scripture paraphrase and insisted only that the “sense” of Scripture be retained in hymns, and on the other hand with Keach, who also used the hymn for purposes of instruction in the doctrines of the Christian Faith.

So far in this second part of the Short Essay Watts has drawn his arguments in the main from two sources: the Bible and the experience of the worshipper. It is only now in the closing pages that he appeals to human authorities for the adoption of hymns. Hymns, he says, have been used in Germany, in the Old Version of the Psalms, and in some dissenting churches (p. 273). He quotes Pliny's letter to Trajan in the beginning of the second century (p. 273). He mentions that in the time of Tertullian hymns were associated with the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (p. 273).⁸ He refers to the Psalms and Hymns of Nepos (p. 273), and to Paulus Samosatenus's rejection of hymns to Jesus Christ as an heretical attitude (p. 274). He makes the statement that humanly composed Christian hymns helped to confute early heresies in the Church (p. 274).

Then comes the Conclusion (pp. 274-6), in which Watts tells the reader that the Essay has been written at the request of ministers and friends who have publicly and privately used hymns, especially at the Lord's Supper (p. 275). He is not sanguine of bringing everybody over to his own conviction of the legality and necessity of human composures:

Scruples and Reliques of an old Opinion will perhaps hang about their Consciences still

(p. 275).

As a matter of fact they did. Contemporary leaders of religion like Thomas Bradbury and later churchmen like William Romaine opposed Watts's ideas.⁹ Like Baxter before him, Watts has no desire to split the Church over the question of hymn-singing (p. 276).¹⁰

In the last paragraph he speaks of the faults in his work. Watts lacks the self-assurance of John Wesley.¹¹ He tells us that it was difficult for him “to sink every Line to the Level of a whole Congregation, and yet to keep it above Contempt” (cf. also preface to Psalms, pp. xxv-vi). This “democratization” of church praise cannot always succeed, and he knows it:

The Blemishes … may serve to awaken some more pious and judicious Fancy to a more successful Attempt; and whoever shall have the Honour of such a Performance, I promise myself a large Share in the Pleasure

(p. 276).

It was not Watts's wish to lord it over the psalmody of the Church, but to set in motion a reform of Christian praise that should continue through all the ages of the Church's mission upon earth—a reform to be renewed as fresh circumstances in the work and worship of the Christian Fellowship arose. And whenever and wherever a Christian hymn is sung throughout the English-speaking world with gladness and sincerity, whether it came first from Watts's warm heart or from the heart of another writer before or since his day, it is humanly and historically speaking his triumph that we are celebrating.

Notes

1. This principle appears often in Watts's strategy as a hymnologist. Cf. Chapter 4, above, and Chapter 7, below, for other examples of it.

2. Cf. Chapter 6, below.

3. Cf. Milton's Areopagitica: “For such is the order of God's enlightening his Church, to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our earthly eyes may best sustain it” (English Reprints, edited by Edward Arber, 1868, p. 77). For other Miltonic influences and echoes in Watts see Chapter 1, above, notes 4, 6 and 9.

4. Cf. last paragraph of present chapter.

5. Cf. Chapter 6. Pauline influence is clearly perceptible in the Short Essay, in which Watts deals with the liberty theme of Galatians after St. Paul's method in Romans of an argument with imaginary objectors.

6. Cf. Chapter 6.

7. Cf. Chapter 3, above, and Chapter 4, last paragraph.

8. Cf. Chapter 3, above.

9. Cf. Chapter 4, note 16.

10. Cf. Mr. Richard Baxter's Paraphrase on the Psalms …, 1692, Preface, Section 7 (bottom).

11. Cf. A Collection of Hymns, For the Use of the People called Methodists, 3rd ed., 1782, Preface, p. iv, Section 5.