A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody / Or, An Enquiry How the Psalms of David Ought to Be Translated into Christian Songs, and How Lawful and Necessary It Is to Compose Other Hymns According to the Clearer Revelations of the Gospel, for the Use of the Christian Church.

E-text prepared by Lewis Jones
Transcriber's note:
This essay was included at the end of the first printing of Isaac Watts (1707) Hymns and Spiritual Songs but was omitted from the 1818 reprint from which the Project Gutenberg edition of that work (e-book #13341, https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13341) was transcribed.
The original 1707 page numbers are retained within curly brackets.
The spelling and punctuation of the 1707 printing are also retained; so are any inconsistencies and errors (e.g. Excercise on p. 265) except that a mistake at the bottom of page 246, as noted in the publisher's concluding Errata, has been corrected.
The long 's' has been replaced by its modern equivalent.
Words broken off and hyphenated at the ends of lines have been joined up and the hyphens deleted.
Italics in the original are indicated by underscores around the text. Watts uses italics for proper nouns and quotations; when proper nouns occur within quotations their italics are removed.
Greek letters have been transliterated (e.g. Psalmos ).
A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody:
Or, An Enquiry how the Psalms of David ought to be translated into Christian Songs, and how lawful and necessary it is to compose other Hymns according to the clearer Revelations of the Gospel, for the Use of the Christian Church.
Isaac Watts