ld a conspicuous place in both the liturgy and Divine Office of the
New Law. He quotes St. Basil, who calls psalmody the voice of the infant
Church, and Urban VIII., who calls psalmody the daughter of hymnody
which is chanted before the throne of God in Heaven. Two quotations from
St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, in praise of psalmody, are added.

2. In the Psalms there is a certain wonderful power which arouses in
souls a zeal for all virtues. Two quotations from St. Augustine are
added. One says that as it is written that all Scriptures both of the
Old and the New Testaments are divinely inspired and useful for our
instruction.... Nevertheless, the book of the Psalms is, as it were, a
very Paradise containing in itself the fruits of all the other books and
expressing them in hymns; and moreover it joins its own hymns to them
and merges them in the general song of praise. Two further quotations
from St. Augustine, in similar strain, follow. For who will be, asks the
saint, unmoved by those frequent passages in the Psalms in which are
proclaimed the immensity, the omnipotence, the infallible justice, the
goodness, the clemency of God? Or who is not moved by the prayers and
thanksgivings for benefits received by the humble and trustful
petitions, by the cries of souls sorrowing for sin, found in the Psalms?
Whom will the Psalmist not fill with admiration when he recounts the
gifts of the Divine loving kindness towards the people of Israel and all
mankind, and when he sets forth the truths of heavenly wisdom? Who,
finally, will not be inflamed with love by the carefully foreshadowed
figure of Christ, our Redeemer, whose voice St. Augustine heard in the
Psalms, either singing or sighing or rejoicing in Hope or mourning in
present sorrow?

3. In, former ages it was decreed by Popes and Councils and by monastic
laws that the whole Psaltery should be recited weekly. Pope St. Pius
V., Pope Clement VIII., and Pope Urban VIII. in their revisions of the
Breviary ordered this weekly recitation. And even at the present time,
such would be the recitation of the Psalter had not the condition of
things changed.

4. This arose from the multiplication of saints' offices (_officia de
sanctis_), which after the canonization of saints gradually grew to
such a huge number that very often the Dominical and Ferial Office
remained unread, and hence not a few psalms were neglected, which yet
are as the rest, as St. Ambrose says, "the benedic