harge 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 implie