Quotes

In our church planting core group, we've finally gotten around to studying exclusive Psalmody. One of the objections I've heard to exclusive psalmody is that we're missing out on the great hymns of the church. Regarding that, here are some quotes culled from Michael Bushell's Songs of Zion:

I believe that a man can find nothing more glorious than these Psalms; for they embrace the whole life of man, the affections of his mind, and the motions of his soul. To praise and glorify God, he can select a psalm suited to every occasion, and thus will find that they were written for him.

-Athanasius (296-373 a.d.)

The truth is, the Old Testament Psalms are perfectly suitable to our dispensation. God and His perfections are the same—correspondence with which there is a permanence n the character and the attributes of the saint, which lays a foundation for a stated system of Psalmody; the graces and exercises of the saint are substantially the same at all times; the description and expression of these, by the Spirit of God, we prefer to the paintings of men. If unsuitable, what a pity that neither Jesus nor His apostles, at any time, gave the most distant hint of this fact; nor did they, so far as we know, attempt to supply the defect.

-Gilbert M’Master, An Apology for the Book of Psalms, 1852