[T]he metrical psalms were the ‘secret weapon of the English Reformation,’ ‘perhaps the most powerful of the persuasive weapons in the armoury of English Protestantism,’ ‘a potent weapon’ against Catholicism….Psalm-singing was never universally welcomed (Queen Elizabeth seems snobbishly to have disapproved of the practice), but it was an important way in which people learned to express their Protestant identity. As a Catholic writer complained in 1616, ‘There is nothing that has drawn multitudes to be of their sects so much, as the singing of their psalms, in such variable and delightful tunes.
Peter Marshall, Protestant England 1489–1642 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 180–181. (HT: Inwoo Lee).
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Inwoo Lee
Inwoo Lee (BA, UCSD) earned his MA (Historical Theology) in 2020 from Westminster Seminary California and is author of “Righteous Before God: William Perkins’ Doctrine of Justification in Elizabethan England” (MA Thesis, Westminster Seminary California, 2020). He lives in the Great Seoul area, in South Korea with his wife Holly.
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I agree, the Psalms are wonderful! Sometimes they’re the most comforting part of the Scriptures.
“let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, singing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs….”
Marc,
That formula was drawn from the headings of the Psalms.
https://heidelblog.net/2012/09/psalms-hymns-and-spiritual-songs-in-the-septuagint/