Sing ye praises with Understanding-inaking melody in your Heart to the Lord. Pf. xlvii. 7.-Eph. v. 19. becil. LONDON: SOLD BY J. MATHEWS, No 18, STRAND; AND W. FLEXNEY Whatever profit arifes from the fale of this Publication, is appropriated to the benefit of the Welch Charity-School in Gray's-Inn Road. It is therefore entered at Stationers Hall, to prevent any furreptitious edition. LENOR LIBRARY NEW YORK 0 ADVERTISEMENT. IT may not be improper to acquaint the Reader into whose hand this compilation may fall, that it is made for the use of a Congregation which hitherto used the Version of Sternbold and Hopkins. As a defire of discontinuing the Old Verfion was pretty general, nothing prevented its removal but the different opinions which prevailed respecting the best of succeeding ones. On comparing several of these together*, an idea was suggested of felecting from each Verfion, such parts as had an evident fuperiority : but as Excellence, wherever observed, was the professed object of fuch a selection; those single Pfalms which had been happily tranflated or paraphrafed by eminent Hands †, became, as far as they could be sung to familiar tunes, a valuable acquifition. At the request of some very respectable Characters who have long wished for a selection of this fort-concife, evangelic, and devotional-it is here attempted. With this view, such Pfalms as principally relate to the concerns of the Jewish State and Nation are abridged: those more generally interesting, appear in different metres: the verses of the 119th stand collected under distinct. heads; and part of Mr. Merrick's Paraphrase is divided into stanzas. The alterations which have been made in order to improve the sense or connection of a few passages; or to reduce two or three unusual metres to the As those by Denham, Milbourne, Tate and Brady, Smart, Merrick, Watts, &c. to the diftinguished excellence of which Iaft-mentioned Verfion this work ands deeply indebted. † Such as Milton, Addison, Rowe, Tollet, Steele, &c. |