tions of praise, and lifting up with one accord the voice of adoration to the throne of Heaven, might justly be compared to the sound of many waters and of mighty thunderings. But whatever interpretation may be given to this passage, the fallacy of making it an argument in favour of Mr. Bennett's choral service, is evident at a glance. The whole description is clearly not literal, but figurative. We are not to suppose that the prophet actually looked into heaven from the isle of Patmos, but only that he saw in a vision a representation of heavenly ministerings, and that, during these sublime trances, the spirit of prophecy fell upon him. He did not, however, behold a vision of angels in a Jewish synagogue, but in heaven; and heard them praising God, not in canto fermo, or plain tune, but in plain prose, though of the sublimest description. Where in this lies the proof that in Christian Churches we are bound to have a choral service? Had those sublime words been spoken by ten times ten thousand voices, with all the expressive accessories of praise, and the profound solemnities of devotion, what could surpass such a burst of homage in great and stupendous effect? The gist of our author's special pleading, in the passage we have just extracted from his volume, is, that because St. John, at Patmos, saw in a prophetic vision a vast assemblage of the heavenly community round the throne of God, and heard them utter a sublime address of praise and adoration, it is canonically expedient, that in Christian churches all the prayers should be chanted, the lessons delivered in recitative, and the psalms sung, accompanied with trumpets and cymbals, and all kinds of music.

What a Bethesda for the restoration of infirm souls has this Oxford graduate established! What an Hygeian depôt for the vent of Bennett's antiphlogistic pills for the cure of crippled catholics and lame schismatics!

After having proved that music was employed in the ancient Jewish worship, our divine continues: "But we must now go forward to the Church of Christ. How do we find this custom of choral music to have been practised in the first ages of Christianity?" (How, indeed?) "We have abundant and decisive proof, from the very earliest times, that the chanting

of psalms and hymns, with creeds and prayers, was the universal custom of the Church. It was most likely, as in other matters, derived from the Jewish custom already prevailing. But certainly, from whatever source derived, the proof of its existence is most clear."

Where is this proof? Our author is prompt at assertion, swelling out his fallacies with an empty ipse dixit. He is the Baron Munchausen of his party, riding his theological Pegasus up a church steeple, and picketing the restive quadruped to the copper cross just underneath the weathercock. Is it not manifest, that in the passage just transcribed from "Principles of the Book of Common Prayer Considered," we have the most barefaced assertion without an atom of proof? If Mr. Bennett could have squeezed proof out of Bingham, or any other theological antiquary, with whose writings he happens to be familiar, he would have readily done so. But no, he has said, thus it is! that is sufficient! And when he tells us that he has been taken up into the third heaven, we shall give him precisely the same credit.

We again beg to ask our learned theologian one or two questions. If, as he would pretend to show, we are bound to adopt ancient Jewish usages, why does not he dance before the altar at Knightsbridge, as David danced before the ark near the house of Obed-Edom? If we are bound to imitate the choral service of the Tabernacle, are we not likewise bound to adopt those instruments by which that service was distinguished? Will Mr. Bennett presume to say that the instruments used in the primitive church are similar to those employed now? Has he ever heard an ancient psaltery, sackbut, dulcimer, viol, shawm, or other instruments of music in use during the first Christian ages? Was the instrument now called an organ, known to the apostles, or any other instruments introduced into the galleries of modern churches? Did Messrs. Gray, and Bishop, and Hill, derive a knowledge of their craft from the writings of some musical mechanic living under the dominion of the Cæsars? Was catgut used for harp strings and fiddle strings in the time of David or of St. Paul? Was the harp of the former like that manufactured by Monsieur Erard, of Broad-street, Golden-square? Even the

C

ancient harp of our own country, and this not many centuries ago, was strung with wire. All the instruments used now are of comparatively modern invention. How then shall we form our choral service after the pattern of the primitive Church, when the musical instruments then employed no longer exist? If we may change the instruments, why not the service? If we are not bound to use in our choirs the musical instruments adopted by the ancient Jews and primitive Christians, why should we be compelled to restore their musical forms? But Mr. Bennett does not show even in his own practice the expediency of that for which he contends in such various fantastical tropes. He goes no farther back for his authorities than to the choral system recognised during the mediaval periods in the chapels of various Cenobite communities, where Moralities were performed on week-days, by the ladies and gentlemen of the house, naked, or dressed, as their assumed characters might require, and the prayers uttered to music on the Sundays; the former, to inflame the senses; the latter, to quiet and prepare them for a repetition of the profane display. But are we to abandon the well considered usages of our ancestors, sanctioned by some of the most learned and pious prelates of the English Church, only because it happens to be agreeable to Mr. Bennett and the Pope?

Our author proceeds to inform us that "the consideration of the Choral Service of the Church will divide itself, strictly speaking, into two parts;" (strictly speaking, it will divide itself,) "the first, that which relates to the prayers, and other portions of a precatory character, and the second, that which relates more especially to psalmody. The whole character of the service appears" (how modestly equivocal!) to have been that of singing, or, more properly speaking, recitative; everything being said, as said to God, in a solemn and prepared manner, with no idea of producing an impression on the people as an audience," (that is, we presume, not as hearers, but as sleepers,) "but of gathering their minds and voices together in speaking to ONE of great and wonderful terror and majesty. The voice of prayer was the voice of a monotone," (a monotone must be some new discovery in zoology, neither animal, reptile, nor insect, yet something

with a voice,) "a prolonged, supplicating, earnestly-crying voice, which was not exactly a chant, but something between a chant and reading. It was generally denominated the canto fermo or planus cantus; in English, plain song or plain tune." The monster, then, has a name as nondescript as the thing itself to which it owes its parentage.

From this very eloquent passage, it will be manifest that our author is unable to define the precise distinction between speaking and singing; the former is something between a chant and reading, the latter, something between reading and a chant. Each is neither, yet both are one.

'Tis the same thing

To read or sing.

"The whole character of the service," observes our author, "appears to have been that of singing, everything being said." Does not this sentence prove against the reverend incumbent of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, that, though he can write so diffusely about speaking and singing, he does not know which is which? Only imagine the voice of a monotone in St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, instead of that of the parson enunciating the prayers! What a solemn mockery! Is there an expression of contempt intense enough in the most copious vocabulary of our vulgar tongue truly to characterize such consummate absurdity?

Mr. Bennett has evidently read Bingham and the Oxford church-antiquarians. The former, in fact, constitutes the secret drawer of his theological cabinet; this piece of gaudy furniture being so clumsily inlaid with the baser metals, that you can hardly discover the parent material.

"We find," continues our divine, "according to Bingham, that there were four different ways of conducting the public psalmody of our Church." So that, according to Mr. Bennett, we find Mr. Bingham splitting Church unity into four; ergo there never could have been any Church unity; unless unity and multiplicity were never correlative, but identical; ONE being a plural noun in the time of Saint Polycarp, and the age immediately subsequent.

If there were four different ways of conducting public

psalmody, why not add a fifth, and give modern protestant Christians the benefit of the novelty? else, subtract four from the sum, and leave the original cipher. But our bold controversialist strips bare his Delphic Apollo, showing that the respectable author of "Antiquities of the Christian Church" frequently fixes his ecclesiastical stilts upon ground too insecure to sustain them; that, whenever they give way, his double is ready at hand to pick up the splinters, and patch them together with an unfailing adhesive drawn from his own Chrismatory at Knightsbridge.

We shall not give ourselves the trouble to follow Mr. Bennett through his numerous references to the Fathers (from Bingham, of course), showing that chanting was adopted in the early Church, since we do not mean to deny the fact. All we mean to say is, that there was no established form of praying in plain tune, and no rule laid down by the Apostles and their immediate descendants for adopting the forms and mummeries so acceptable to the magnates of Belgrave-square. Nothing can be more futile or more impertinent than the arguments employed to establish this outrage upon the common sense and good taste of those occupying houses in that aristocratic locality.

If Mr. Bennett knew how to read with force and fervour, he never would "sing unto the Lord," except in "psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs:" neither would he, against all rules of propriety, chop the Lord's heaven into two accented syllables (he reads hév-vén), and render his elocution to the ear what a crab-apple is to the teeth. Let him sing unto the people, if he will, when delivering, in a starched Irish surplice, his homilies, or rather, his lecture-sermons, on the "Principles of the Book of Common Prayer," and we shall not trouble ourselves to notice his folly; but when he turns divine worship into a farce, at which schismatics may rail, and infidels scoff, by singing what ought to be read, we conceive ourselves called upon to rebuke his presumption, though, while we do so, we cannot help pitying his fatuity. It is our firm belief that these follies are weakening the defences of our Zion. However blind men may be to the mischief they are doing, that mischief is not the less positive because they