the charge of the musical part of the service mainly devolved,—­whose duty it was to give out[1166] the Psalm, to lead it,[1167] very commonly to read it out line by line,[1168] and frequently to select what was to be sung.  No wonder, Secker, speaking of Church psalmody, requested his clergy to take great care how they chose their clerks.[1169] And no wonder, it may be added, that Church psalmody, under such conditions, fell into a state which was a reproach to the Church that could tolerate it.

In the first years of the eighteenth century there were still occasional discussions whether organs were to be considered superstitious and Popish.[1170] They had been destroyed or silenced in the time of the Commonwealth; and it was not without much misgiving on the part of timid Protestants that after the Restoration one London church after another[1171] admitted the suspected instruments.  An organ which was set up at Tiverton in 1696 gave rise to much dispute, and was the occasion of Dodwell writing on ’The lawfulness of instrumental music in holy offices.’[1172] A pamphleteer in 1699, who signs himself N.N., quoted Isidore, Wicliffe, and Erasmus against the use of musical instruments in public worship.[1173] Scotch Presbyterians and English Dissenters entirely abjured them, till Rowland Hill, near the end of the century, erected one in the Surrey Chapel.[1174] It was noted on the other hand, as one of the signs of High Church reaction in Queen Anne’s time, that churches without organs had thinner congregations.[1175]

It is perhaps not too much to say, that through a great part of the eighteenth century chanting was almost unknown in parish churches, and was regarded as distinctively belonging to ‘Cathedral worship.’  Watts, who, although a Nonconformist, was well acquainted with a great number of Churchmen, and was likely to be well informed on any question of psalmody, remarked, in somewhat quaint language, that ’the congregation of choristers in cathedral churches are the only Levites that sing praise unto the Lord with the words of David and Asaph the seer.’[1176]

Even in Cathedrals musical services were looked upon with great disfavour by many, and by many others with a bare tolerance nearly allied to disapproval.  Could the question of their continuance have been put to popular vote they might probably have been maintained by a small majority as being conformable to old custom, but without appreciation, and with an implied understanding that they were wholly exceptional.  The Commissioners of King William’s time had suggested that the chanting of divine service in cathedrals should be laid aside;[1177] and even Archbishop Sharp, although in many respects a High Churchman, told Thoresby that he did not much approve of singing the prayers, ’but it having been the custom of all cathedrals since the Reformation, it is not to be altered without a law.’[1178] Exaggerated dread of Popery suspected latent evils, it scarcely knew what, lurking in this