The modern distinction between psalms and hymns is arbitrary (see PSALMS). The former word was used by the LXX. as a generic designation, probably because it implied an accompaniment by the psaltery (said by Eusebius to have been of very ancient use in the East) or other instruments. The cognate verb "psallere" has been constantly applied to hymns, both in the Eastern and in the Western Church; and the same compositions which they described generically as "psalms" were also called by the LXX. "odes" (i.e. songs) and "hymns." The latter word occurs, e.g. in Ps. lxxii. 20 ("the hymns of David the son of Jesse"), in Ps. lxv. 1, and also in the Greek titles of the 6th, 54th, 55th, 67th and 76th (this numbering of the psalms being that of the English version, not of the LXX.). The 44th chapter of Ecclesiasticus, "Let us now praise famous men," &c., is entitled in the Greek [Greek: paterôn hymnos], "The Fathers' Hymn." Bede speaks of the whole book of Psalms as called "liber hymnorum," by the universal consent of Hebrews, Greeks and Latins. In the New Testament we find our Lord and His apostles singing a hymn ([Greek: hymnêsantes exêlthon]), after the institution of the Lord's Supper; St Paul and Silas doing the same ([Greek: hymnoun ton theon]) in their prison at Philippi; St James recommending psalm-singing ([Greek: psalletô]), and St Paul "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" ([Greek: psalmois kai hymnois kai ôdais pneumatikais]) St Paul also, in the 14th chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, speaks of singing ([Greek: psalô]) and of every man's psalm ([Greek: hekastos hymôn psalmon echei]). In a context which plainly has reference to the assemblies of the Corinthian Christians for common worship. All the words thus used were applied by the LXX. to the Davidical psalms; it is therefore possible that these only may be intended, in the different places to which we have referred. But there are in St Paul's epistles several passages (Eph. v. 14; 1 Tim. iii. 16; 1 Tim. vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 11, 12) which have so much of the form and character of later Oriental hymnody as to have been supposed by Michaelis and others to be extracts from original hymns of the Apostolic age. Two of them are apparently introduced as quotations, though not found elsewhere in the Scriptures. A third has not only rhythm, but rhyme. The thanksgiving prayer of the assembled disciples, recorded in Acts iv., is both in substance and in manner poetical; and in the canticles, "Magnificat," "Benedictus," &c., which manifestly followed the form and style of Hebrew poetry, hymns or songs, proper for liturgical use, have always been recognized by the church.