I. THE INFLUENCE OF WATTS ON THE WESLEYS
The line of hymnic succession between Watts and the Wesleys was direct and not through Doddridge, for the latter’s hymns did not appear until 1754. One-half of John Wesley’s American Collection, the first hymnbook published in America, issued in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1737, after two years’ work in the new Colony of Georgia, consisted of Watts’ hymns. It goes without saying that Watts’ hymnbooks, with others like Tate and Brady’s New Version, George Herbert’s poems, the hymns of John Austin, of Henry More, and of Norris of Bemerton, were so well known, and so appreciated, that copies of them were included among the books carried to America. In early manhood they met the already elderly Watts, and as they walked they sang together. Indeed, with Dr. Benson we may “infer that Watts’ Psalms and Hymns, in connection with Tate and Brady’s New Version, furnished the materials for the singing of the ‘Holy Club.’”
It is evident from the list of hymnbooks, and from the list of Wesley’s selections for his American Collection, that Watts was not the only influence that gave the impulse and fashioned the Wesleyan ideals of the public song service. It is noteworthy that Barton and Mason were not included. The High-Church Anglican Wesleys were not so prejudiced against Watts’ Nonconformist hymns as to exclude them.