Dunster's house:) he brought it
the condition wherein our churches have since used it. Now though
I heartily join with those gentlemen who wish that the _poetry_
thereof were mended, yet I must confess, that the Psalms have never
yet seen a _translation_ that I know of nearer to the Hebrew
original; and I am willing to receive the excuse which our translators
themselves do offer us when they say: 'If the verses are not always so
elegant as some desire or expect, let them consider that God's
altar needs not our pollishings; we have respected rather a plain
translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any
paraphrase. We have attended conscience rather than elegance, fidelity
rather than ingenuity, that so we may sing in Zion the Lord's songs of
praise, according unto his own will, until he bid us enter into our
Master's joy to sing eternal hallelujahs.'"
I have never liked Cotton Mather so well as after reading this calm
and kindly account of the production of "The Bay-Psalm-Book." He was a
scholarly man, and doubtless felt keenly and groaned inwardly at the
inelegance, the appalling and unscholarly errors in the New England
version; and yet all he mildly said was that "it was thought that a little
more of art was to be employed upon them," and that he "wishes the poetry
hereof was mended.
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