The Independents sat in their pews during the commemoration, instead of sitting close around the tables, as the Presbyterians did; also, they disapproved of the unfrequency of the service amongst their brethren, and were themselves wont to celebrate it week by week. Generally, they partook of the sacred emblems in silence. Philip Nye, according to the report of Robert Baillie, thought that the minister, in preaching, should "be covered, and the people discovered;" but that, "in the sacrament, the minister should be discovered, as a servant, and the guests all covered."[427] How far this strange practice prevailed we cannot say; but the wearing of hats at the Lord's table was a reproach which we find cast upon the Independents by Edwards, the Presbyterian; and that he did not bring the charge without good reason appears from the reply which was made to him by one Catherine Chidley, who thus attempts to vindicate the practice: "It may be as lawful for one man to sit covered, and another uncovered, as it may be lawful for one man to receive it sitting, and another lying in bed."[428] [Sidenote: _Psalmody._] XII. A prejudice existed amongst some of the earlier Baptists against the use of psalmody in the worship of the Almighty, but the practice met with decided approval from Ainsworth and Robinson, who were patriarchs of Congregationalism.[429] Also, in "The Apologetical Narration of the Five Brethren," the singing of psalms is mentioned as a part of their worship, from which it follows that any objection to it amongst the Congregationalists must have been quite exceptional. The many versions of the Psalms (forty-three at least) at the commencement of the Civil Wars, bear witness to the extensive delight felt at that time in the exercise of praise. Of the primitive Protestant version of Sternhold and Hopkins, there were then several Genevan editions; and certain other versions--altogether distinct from it--present clear indications of a Puritan, and even of a Nonconformist origin.[430] Rivalry between the two Presbyterian hymnologists, Rouse and Barton, as to the use of their new books, published respectively in 1641 and 1644, has been already noticed. The metrical psalms of King Edward the Sixth's time--which had been enjoined under Queen Elizabeth, and in the reigns of the early Stuarts had been liked by the Puritans--were pronounced by some, after the commencement of the Civil Wars, as "uncouth, and unsuited to the times." But the venerable psalter of the Reformers still, to some extent, held its ground; and Baxter complains that those who laid it by used, "some one, and some another" of the existing versions, so that there could be no uniformity at that time in "the service of song."[431]