His life all wonder was,
But here’s a wonder more,
That He, who was all life and love,
Should be beloved no more.
I’ll love Him while I live;
To those that be His foes,
Though I them hate, I’ll wish no worse
Than His dear love to lose.”
Benjamin Keach, the author of Tropologia; a Key to open Scripture Metaphors and Types, was a zealous hymnologist. This Baptist minister vindicated the practice of singing against the objections of some of his brethren, in a curious book printed in 1661 under the title of Breach repaired in good Worship, or singing Psalms proved to be an Ordinance of Christ. Having written The Glorious Lover, a Divine Poem, in 1679, he published, in 1691, a volume entitled Spiritual Melody, containing “Psalms and Hymns from the Old and New Testament,” and also The Bread revived in God’s Worship, or singing of Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs proved to be an Holy Ordinance. These were followed, in 1696, by The Feast of Fat Things full of Marrow. In referring to hymns of this date, however, we pass over our boundary line, yet, if I may trespass so far, I would select a copy of verses composed by Keach as a specimen of the extraordinary doggerel which he considered fit for congregational worship. It is not to be taken as a specimen of the worship which was actually celebrated in Nonconformist chapels before the Revolution; for Keach’s book, as it appears from what I have just said, was not published until afterwards, and the state of psalmody amongst Dissenters must be reserved for future consideration. It, however, indicates a certain taste, or a want of taste altogether, which in some quarters might be found during the period covered by our present survey.
“If saints, O Lord, do season all