New England -- Religious life and customs; New England -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Sunday
Hood says, "There is almost a certainty that no other version than
Ainsworth was ever used in the colonies until the New England Version was
published. But if any one was used in one or two of the churches it was
Sternhold and Hopkins." I cannot feel convinced of this, but believe that
both Ravenscroft's and Sternhold and Hopkins' Versions were used at first
in many of the Bay settlements. Salem church had a peculiar connection in
its origin with the church of Plymouth, which would account, doubtless,
for its protracted use of the version so loved by the Pilgrims; but the
Puritans of the Bay, coming directly from England, must have brought with
them the version which they had used in England, that of Sternhold and
Hopkins; and they would hardly have wished, nor would it have been possible
for them to acquire speedily in the new land the Ainsworth's Version used
by the Pilgrims from Holland.
The second edition of Ainsworth's Version was printed in 1617, a third
in 1618; the fourth, in London in 1639, was a folio; and the sixth, in
Amsterdam in 1644, was an octavo. A little 24mo copy is in the Essex
Institute in Salem, and an octavo is in the Prince Library, now in the
custody of the Public Library of the City of Boston. The latter copy has
a note in it written by the Rev. Thomas Prince: "Plymouth, May 1, 1732. I
have seen an edition of this version of 1618; and this version was sung
in Plymouth Colony and I suppose in the rest of New England 'till the New
England Version was printed."
There is a copy of the first edition of Ainsworth in the Bodleian Library
and one in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The American Antiquarian
Society and the Lenox Library are the only public libraries in America that
possess copies, so far as I know. The one in the library of the American
Antiquarian Society was presented to it in 1815 by the Rev. William Bentley
of Salem, Massachusetts, to whom also belonged the copy of the Bay Psalm
Book now in the library at Worcester. He was a divine and a bibliophile and
an antiquary, but there also ran in his veins blood of warmer flow. During
the war of 1812, when the report came, in meeting-time, that the frigate
"Constitution" was being chased into Marblehead harbor, the loyal parson
Bentley locked up his church, and tucked up his gown, and sallied forth
with his whole flock of parishioners to march to Marblehead with the
soldiers, ready to "fight unto death" if necessary. Being short and fat,
and the mercury standing at eighty-five degrees, the doctor's physical
strength gave out, and he had to be hoisted up astride a cannon to ride to
the scene of conflict,--martial in spirit though weak in the legs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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